Matching design sketches to the desired level of design feedback: "people reviewing a highly polished design may concentrate on superficial details and overlook fundamental issues. In the early stages of the process, you may be able to elicit deeper feedback by striving for an unfinished look in your design representations."

+1 - we (like many people) adopt deliberately "sketchy" styles for early-stage designs, precisely to avoid the "I like this, but can it be green" type of feedback you often get when showing off concepts.

Amnesty releases API access to censored files: "The irrepressible.info campaign, launched in May, provides javascript banners featuring censored sites and content. The API will give direct access to the irrepressible.info site’s database of censored material so that supporters can create their own applications to distribute the information better."

Zettabyte Storage zBox: "The zBox is offered as part of a complete online backup service known as ZettaBits. The zBox runs on your local network and automatically backs up data to Amazon S3. Once you commit (I'm not sure if the proper term is buy, lease, or rent) a zBox and place it on your network, data stored locally will end up safe and secure in S3."

Beautiful. How long before someone hooks up a Nokia photo frame to Flickr?

Why value is slipping away from the operators: "Almost all of the value in my user experience was associated with third party brands and the handset manufacturer."

I disagree with Marek's conclusions here - that operators are becoming irrelevant - but I think that he's right when he talks about the value of his user experience. Part of the problem is that operators are like a utility: you only notice them when they don't work, or when they behave abnormally. Billing, providing a network, subsidising a handset - all these things can and do fade into the background during everyday use.

This presents operators with a problem, of course,

It's also worth noting that Marek (like me) is an absolutely atypical user. Our usage requirements (for many applications and data-driven services) are unusual; we might be closer to the sort of user that operators want to be servicing in 10 years time, but right now revenues from a typical operator here in the UK are 70% voice, 26% SMS and 4% all the other stuff (MMS, data, WAP, content, email, etc.) So I think he's relying on anecdotal evidence when he says that "numerous people use services such as Google Mail and Flickr"; even if large numbers of power users do use these services, they're a drop in the ocean compared to the wider audience.

I love Marek's ideas around self-service though, and it's somewhere that the operators are well behind: why can't I get my phone bill or manage my account through my handset itself?

He reminds me here of a nice little epithet Robert came out with last time I saw him: that "if you have to have a meeting to come to a commercial arrangement with someone, you're not working on Internet Time".

Why MMS is struggling worldwide: "MMS is a means to deliver multimedia messages and thus its success is closely coupled with the value proposition of the technology-enabled application that will drive its usage"

I have real difficulty understanding what this means, but I think the argument breaks down into:

1. Phones are mainly used for phone calls.
2. Phones have small screens.
3. Operators are trying to sell MMS like it was text messaging - i.e. trying to drive high volume of communications-related messages
4. The mass market needs to be persuaded to use more advanced technologies

So, err, not much useful info there. Or have I misread?