Almost since the day the iPhone came out, people have asked about a KGS client for the popular smartphone. An Android client for KGS was published a few years ago but iPhone users were still out in the cold. No longer: this year ShinKGS was developed by a go player who wanted to solve this problem.
KGS developers have been working on this client on and off for years. Every once in a while they would post on the KGS Google+ page with a status update. Last year they published the API for developers to create their own clients, and since then two have been developed. ShinKGS has received some support from KGS by having it be part of their website.
ShinKGS has been in beta for a few months and the platform has been very stable. It’s also been good enough that the new ownership of KGS has hosted it on their site. Monday at lunch at the Go Congress Todd Heidenreich (right), was able to watch the Masters Round 4, Board 1 battle between Zi Yang Hu 2p and Zirui Tim Song 1p on his iPhone.
Programmer Justin Kramer has open-sourced this project on GitHub and says that he and KGS are always looking for more programmers to help support the client. ShinKGS works well on a phone (left) of course, and is even easier to use on an iPad.
Ilya Kirillov has also been working on a HTML5 client for KGS called GoUniverse. His app can be found in the Google Chrome App Store.
– Steve Colburn
