Google + has come closest, so far, to being the reference application for mobile content sharing among small, semi-private groups but that may change with the release of Glassboard. Created by Brent Simmons and Nick Bradbury, Glassboard allows iOS and Android users to share text, images, and location information within small groups. The difference is that content shared on Glassboard is completely private, even from the prying, searching eyes of the Google. Transport is over SSL only, and stored data is encrypted.
Simmons and Bradbury are most widely known for their work on RSS readers, NetNewsWire and FeedDemon, respectively.
Marshall Kirkpatrick, writing for ReadWriteWeb, reports Glassboard is built on Microsoft’s Azure and will integrate with Microsoft’s Office 365.
Kirkpatrick sums up the state of RSS (within which I spend most of my online time) eloquently:
“Sadly, listening meaningfully to other people will never be as popular as babbling about yourself or drooling, so RSS reading applications didn’t explode like subsequent technologies have. ... [T]he lack of uptake of RSS reading software by consumers and businesses is among the turns of events in recent technology history that’s most disparaging of the state of humanity. That a personalized, centralized repository for updates from dynamic streams of information delivered by free trusted sources of democratic publishing all over the world has had its tech-lunch eaten by mind-rotting casual Flash games on Facebook is as depressing as the way that public education dreams were dashed when the promise of television became its reality. It’s like the psychedelic dreams of Harvard’s Dr. Timothy Leary becoming the wretched, heartbreaking narcotic drama of the TV show The Wire. It’s terrible. It’s reason to pack it all up and go home.”
Indeed.
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