Johnny Pi on games where players learn to degrade: "I envision a game that reverses the notion that player-characters must always increase in power and options. What if you played a character with memory loss?"

Via Mr Jones, a post concerning games where peace, not conflict, is the aim:

"Once we have a game system where the player is trying to maintain peace through a series of interesting choices (the same as one would make war in a typical Real Time Strategy), we can make things more complicated. What if the player not only needs to maintain peace, but also needs to be in a dominant position over the other players?"

One of the "aha" moments I belatedly had about 3-4 months after a group of us started playing Go, was the idea that efficiency is important in tallying up final scores: you get more points for capturing the maximum ground with minimal pieces. Or to put it another way (and given how err "undeveloped" my Go-playing skills are, I may be completely misunderstanding things): you win more by minimising direct conflict.

Good lord - well it had to happen, I guess. Phone sex outsourced to India: "Some call center operators have secretly set up phone sex operations in Bangalore and Mumbai, though it's strictly against the law and call forwarding to cell phones is making it even harder for the police to nail the offenders"

The Everquest Economy: "...in the course of litigation discovered that the plaintiff ran a sweatshop in Mexico where workers participated in the game solely to collect salable items."

Mobile TV predictions: "Before full television programming, many operators are experimenting with short episodes and clips. Most recently, Verizon Wireless has joined with a production company, Twentieth Television, to deliver direct-to-mobile shows as part of its new VCast service. The deal will also be extended to Verizon Wireless co-owner Vodafone’s Live! platform outside the US. The TV company plans to produce 52 one-minute ‘mobisodes’ of two original soap operas."