Perfect German Board Game redefines Genre, WIRED. A pretty detailed look at the game Settlers of Catan, why it's brilliant, and catching on. Interesting also in it's classification of the traditional American board games: Chess and Scrabble are best played by those that devote their lives to playing these games, and Monopoly and Risk are too long and dumb for people to enjoy again and again.
Welcome to a world without foreign correspondents, Reuters Alertnet Andrew Stroehlein argues about the increasing trends towards shallow journalism -- reporting about pirates in Somalia with hardly any discussion about the failed Somali state, total ignorance of the people caught between the government and the LTTE in Sri Lanka -- in American media. There is definite anger, and I love how well it's articulated.
Too bad Al Jazeera English is not available on most living room screens in the US, and people there have to choke down the endless rotting fish heads of celebrity news or the same tiresome group of ignoramuses shouting at each other in a studio -- both the cheapest forms of filling air time after a test card.
Internet Users in Developing Countries Drag on Sites' Profits, NYTimes A report on how social media sites are growing (exploding) in developing countries, but without profits, as banner ads don't draw huge clickthrough rates there. An interesting example of technologies not translating immediately from North to South. But as Ethan Zuckerman points out, a very intersting problem to solve, especially if you consider how important these things are to activists (Ref: The Cute Cat Theory of Social Activism.).
(Highly drawn from Ethan Zuckerman's link catalog on 04-28.)
