Re: Background or explanation
Here's the problem: there are now three major international student cluster competitions, each with 8+ teams, 5 or more apps, and three or more winners. I probably end up writing somewhere around 20-30 articles for each competition. I can't face a life where each and every one of these stories has to contain verbiage summarizing the entire competition. It would be way tedious to read and more tedious to write.
The solution? I wrote up a comprehensive guide to Student Cluster Competitions earlier this year. That article (here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/14/guide_to_student_cluster_compos/) explains pretty much everything you need to know about these events.
While that article isn't linked in each and every story, the stories that I have linked to do have a link to that original document. (Now that's a great sentence, very clear.) . So, like the other posters have said, if you're interested, check out the links - they have the details.