I've heard that the white board feature worked in previous versions of Inkscape, but had to be enabled when compiling. Is this true?

If so, what version did it work in, and is there somewhere I can get an already compiled windows build with the white board enabled?

I think you can compile 0.46 and dev 0.47 with it but it's probably not working right. I also remember something from the dev list lately that they would remove the code because it's not ready to be used. Try searching on nabble http://www.nabble.com/Inkscape---Dev-f1926.html