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Congratulations to Denver’s new mobile powerhouse!

A big congratulations is in order for our good friends at Double Encore and Xcellent Creations. The two mobile app shops have joined forces. As Double Encore and their peers drive growth to the mobile development community in Denver and Boulder, companies looking for a solid partnership and trustworthy app development have no farther to look than the Rocky Mountains.

Dan Burcaw says it himself. There is an influx of talent going on. People want to work in mobile and Denver is a “phenomenal place.”

This isn’t just great news because DE has contributed greatly to the mobile app space and I imagine they’ll keep churning out amazing work in the future, but most importantly, they are great friends of the Glassboard team and their strides make us proud.

I also have to say the announcement on their website really reminds me of Daft Punk. That’s some digital love right there!

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

A great year so far for Glassboard

Looking back on this year so far for Glassboard is inspiring. Not only were we featured in both respective app stores, but we also got a Mashable mention! 2013 is shaping up to be a great year. Have a look at Glassboard, front and center:

In the Apple app store:

On Google Play:

And if you missed it, here is Mashable’s list of 10 apps to dominate your workday, which includes Glassboard!

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

Are you ready to go back in time in Glassboard?

A new feature we discretely added into the web app last week was a shiny new button that lets you show more posts. All of them. That’s right: you can now go back in time to the VERY BEGINNING of your Glassboard boards.

When we created Glassboard, we implemented the system such that nothing of yours ever gets deleted, unless you explicitly request it (i.e., if you delete a board, everything in it is deleted permanently). However, we also wanted the app to be fast. We also wanted it to be used as sort of an ongoing means of communication, not really an archiving system. This created a dilemma of not being able to see things posted farther back than 100 messages or so, despite those items still existing.

(Premium Glassboard subscribers can download an entire archive of a board, but this is more of a way to back up a board before you delete it.)

Now there’s a way to see it all! For every board you have, you can hit “Show More” to your heart’s content. This feature is just in the web app for now, but please take it for a spin! Safety guaranteed.

Glassboard web app

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

Glassboard – Wood free since 2013!

Instead of continuing to pursue a fancy design that at times perplexed people, our iPhone developer and UI guy Brent Simmons decided to simplify things. The wood background is gone, and links now appear highlighted and tappable. If you haven’t already downloaded the new version of Glassboard for iPhone (and soon to be on Android), please do so!

For a more technical breakdown of other changes in 2.3.3, here is a post by Brent. I’m not sure what some of it means but he does reference not crossing streams which all nerds can relate to.

Besides being thrilled about the design and performance changes this month in Glassboard, it also worked out where we are being featured in the New & Noteworthy for Social Networking apps in iTunes! This comes only a short time after having the Android app featured in Google Play. 2013 is off to a great start for Glassboard!

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

Will Glassboard ever sell your pictures?

Big news this week as Instagram announced a major change in their Terms of Service that allows them to use your photos as advertisements. This NYT article does a great job of outlining exactly how the change will affect you. Worth noting is the fact that you cannot opt out!

It should come as no great surprise, after all. One could imagine this was the direction they would be headed after their acquisition by Facebook. It still hurts the community though. People love Instagram and it’s unfair to subject them to these changes for the sake of profit. Unfortunately that’s the business model they’ve had to pursue under Facebook.

Everyone on the Glassboard team has had experience with ad-based revenue models, and while they may work for some companies it’s not something we ever want to revisit.

I’ll say it again to be clear: Glassboard will never sell your photos for any reason. We like how our freemium model has been going and we’re going to stick with that approach.

Before the new Instagram TOS take effect on January 16th, you can opt out in one way: delete your account. Before you do that, here is how you can download all of your photos.

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

The evolution of social networks

Social networking has come a long way over the lifetime of the Internet. Remember BBS and IRC? As a means of interaction, they were the start of social. Over time people grew to adopt more of an online identity, and forums and blogs came about. From there sites like LinkedIn and MySpace grew to accommodate the desire to interact more, and now we have Facebook.

What’s the future of social networking then?

Facebook continues to grow, but alternatives are cropping up. The desire for niche, ad hoc, and private networks are driving growth with apps like Glassboard, Path, and EveryMe. This shift reminds me of when Twitter was introduced and the whole concept of microblogging. It was fun to give it a whirl, but what was the real purpose of composing 140 character messages for the world to read? It took some time, but people began to realize that Twitter was a natural evolution from blogging.

I’d like to think of Glassboard as kind of the same thing: as people are drawn away from their giant social network on Facebook, they realize that small social groups within Glassboard just makes more sense now.

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

Comics on Glassboard Part Deux. Dexter strikes back!

Glassboard has been essential to the Sepia Labs team to get work done. It has also been used by members of the team to keep in close contact with family despite their geographical location. But sometimes we just want to use the app for fun things, and Nick Bradbury’s Dexter board is one of them.

To give you a little background, our Android developer, Nick Bradbury, drew a fairly popular comic strip during college called Dexter. Unfortunately he had to eventually give up this pursuit (software development is much better at paying the bills!), but we can look back on his old comics as he posts them to the Dexter board on Glassboard.

Folks are more than welcome to join the board. In fact, it’s a good way to use Glassboard if you’re not very familiar with it and you don’t yet have others you know using the app. The invite code is ‘dexter’.

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

Do NOT mess around in Bloomingdale’s: Sharing comics in Glassboard

[Sam Davies, comic book enthusiast, was kind enough to contribute the following post on how he uses Glassboard to share and discuss comics. Enjoy!]

The perfect storm has led me to spending way too much time (and money) on reading comic books lately. First, my nearly-six-year-old daughter has graduated from Owly to X-Men (she likes Storm the best) and I wouldn’t be a good father if I didn’t know if the Phoenix was presently alive or dead. Second, Comixology on the iPad has made purchasing comic books instant gratification without taking up any shared bookshelf space.

I’ve found a group of friendly comic book reading grown-ups locally. Rather than clutter up our Twitter feed with discussion of the Marvel Universe, I set up a Glassboard to share what we are reading and enjoying (or not enjoying). It allows us to post reviews, comment easily, bookmark ideas of books to read later, and even attach excerpts of the comics to a post. Most importantly, I can read, post, and comment all without leaving the iPad.

When I get a new comic, I’ll start reading it in Comixology. If I find a particular page I like, I’ll take a screenshot of it by pressing the “On/Off” Switch and the Home button on my iPad simultaneously. Then I continue reading. After I’m done, I open the Photos app and sort through the screenshots for the best one to post.

For example, reading through the classic X-Men “Mutant Massacre” storyline, I find particularly anachronistic page of Rogue visiting Bloomingdales (click for big):

I don’t want to share the whole page, just the top left panel, so I crop it and hit save.

I launch Glassboard from the convenient “Save to Home Screen” icon and type up a quick review.

Even though this is not a native iPad application, the image attachment functionality works just like you’d expect it to. Tap on the camera icon, pick your photo from the iPad’s Photo Library, hit send, and you are done.

It even looks great on the Glassboard app for iPhone.

Adding this image makes all the difference. Often a single panel chosen by a friend is all the “review” you need to decide if a comic is worth reading.

If I had to go to a different device to share my thoughts, I’d never do it. The combination of Comixology and Glassboard on my iPad allows me share my thoughts before I forget to, directly to the people who would enjoy reading them the most.

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

Some insights into how people use Glassboard

It’s no surprise that people love to share photos. It’s a feature that powers many social networks and keeps them thriving, and Glassboard is no exception. We did some analysis on how people use Glassboard (keep in mind everything is encrypted and we can’t read anything you post: but we can deduce some factors like the following) and 1 out of every 5 messages has an attachment which is almost always a photo.

Looking over the Sepia Labs board this holds true despite the primary purpose of the board being for work discussion. Like any other group we still share pictures of our kids/pets/food just like anyone else.

Out of everything posted to Glassboard, 8% of messages include location. This was a big surprise to us since we assumed it would be more around 2%.

For every new message, there are 1.61 comments on it. There are many many messages without comments, and somewhere out there there’s a message with something like 100 comments on it.

Finally, people have gone back and deleted .39% of posts to Glassboard. I’m glad to see this oft-asked for feature used so much!

Posted by Jenny Blumberg

Happy Halloween from the Glassboard team!

At one point we tried to add phone support for Glassboard, but we made a poor hiring decision that has led to substandard customer service. Guess we’ll have to stick with email!

Posted by Jenny Blumberg