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I recently have been playing a fair deal of RISK on the web with some friends.¹ RISK, for those who don’t know, is a wonderful world domination strategy board game.

photo credit: kazamatsuri

My friends and I use a site called warfish.net which lets you set up games with your friends and play sans Flash. You don’t need to play in real time, either… warfish will email you when it’s your turn, making it a great way to play with friends halfway around the world. The site is invite-only, but you can request an invite from me here.

About a week ago I tried playing from my iPhone while on the train and it worked remarkably well. The addition of a proper <meta name='viewport'> tag so I don’t have to zoom in with every reload would be even better, but I really can’t complain. This weekend I was playing on the way to and during breaks at my spacetime workshop as well.

Here’s a quick video I put together to show how it’s done on the iPhone:

Hope to play with you soon!

From Asiajin:

Softbank Mobile announced today to release 1-seg digital TV tuner device for iPhone in the middle of December. The 80-gram device provides the feature of TV over WiFi (converting TV signal received to IP-based data for iPhone) and doubles as a battery extender. Three hours continuous TV viewing is available.

I’ve seen a number of these ワンセグ (wansegu, 1seg) digital TV tuner-enabled phones around the office and in trains. I’m not a huge TV watcher, even in Japan,¹ but I have to say these phones are pretty cool. In the land of one-hour train commutes, there’s definitely both appeal and demand. I’ve sat on trains next to everyone from hip high schoolers to grandparents watching TV on these phones.

Frankly, however, I think the fact that it’s a separate device (even if it can be unwired) will still limit its attractiveness. I’ll be curious to see what the interface is like.