Google Noticeboard

Google Noticeboard is a new service from Google Labs India that intends to improve the way Indian communities share information online.

Its an application that helps people access and share information over the Internet using public digital noticeboards. Using Google Noticeboard, communities can access a variety of relevant information. People can create text messages or record voice snippets and post them to one or more noticeboards. Typically each digital noticeboard carries publicly accessible messages. Compared to the notion of personal communication using email accounts, the Noticeboard metaphor allows user to engage in public communication with communities.

Noticeboard uses a Firefox extension and requires to enable IMAP in Gmail to send messages. The service seems to be aimed at people that don’t own computer and don’t have an email address, but the interface is very basic and limiting. Google Noticeboard’s user guide (PDF) has more information.

I am not sure how useful this is, lets see how people use it.