Archive for September, 2009

Twitter for Go Players

2009-09-21

Twitter can be a great way to get news about topics you’re interested in. But it only works if you find the right people to follow. If you’re a Go player, start by following @smartgo, then pick some of the following (in no particular order):

@gobum @imabuddha @FunkeeMonk @ludwig1024 @alfmikula @kyubic @DavidPlumpton @hanekomu @nexik @361points @Oolong4Go @RoboJenny

Go associations on Twitter: @theaga @britgo

If you know Japanese: @igonews

Go-related tweets are often marked with a hashtag you can search for. I use #weiqi, others use #igo or #baduk.

You can find people to follow for any topic that interests you. I like to keep up with President Obama through @markknoller. @daringfireball delivers insights into iPhone and Mac issues. @badbanana provides my style of humor. The science fiction writer William Gibson writes as @GreatDismal.

Enjoy. Follow people and check out what they say. If they tweet too often, or don’t suit you, simply unfollow. And at some point you might want to tweet yourself.

Go Problems in SmartGo Pro

2009-09-19

Hanekomu had a number of questions about Go problems in SmartGo Pro.

I have entered many many problems already for GoGrinder; is it possible to transfer them to SmartGo Pro on the iPod touch?

Sorry, not yet. Games can be imported, but not problems, so far.

Is there an option to shuffle the problem order, to randomly rotate and to randomly swap colors?

Yes. See http://www.smartgo.com/en/touchproblems.htm.

Does it automatically advance to the next problem?

You need to tap the Next Problem button to advance to the next problem.

Can you manually select the previous/next problem and go to the beginning and end of the current set?

Yes.

Can you manually explore variations? GoGrinder has a nice “Navigate solution” feature that shows “right” next moves as green dots and “wrong” next moves as red dots.

No. This is probably the most requested feature with regards to problems. The UI is tricky, but I’ll definitely add that at some point.

Does it support both triangled moves as well as WV[] to indicate “wrong” variations?

Not sure, would have to investigate. As you can’t import problems at the moment, it’s a moot point. It’s using pretty much the same code as SmartGo on Windows.

If there are several moves for the opponent, does it choose an answer randomly? If so, does after finishing one line, does it go through other possibly opponent answers as well?

Yes, it chooses randomly, and no, it doesn’t go through the other possible opponent answers.

Can you group problems hierarchically and select a subdirectory of problems that you want to solve?

Not quite. But you can filter by different criteria, such as difficulty or type of problem.

Does it keep a timer and a counter for the number of problems you got right and wrong?

No timer. It keeps track of the number of problems tried and solved.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have other questions.

SmartGo 2.8.3.5 (Public Beta)

2009-09-01

A public beta of SmartGo for Windows is available for download:

http://www.smartgo.com/SGSetup2835.exe

It contains some bug fixes as well as an updated game collection with 47,674 professional games. Please let us know if you run into any issues.

The success of the iPhone version has kept us busy for the last year. And there is more to be done. Some of the improvements of the iPhone version will make their way back to the desktop, but it will take a while. We appreciate your patience.