Companies blur lines over who owns devices

When Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) remotely disabled the last of its flawed Galaxy Note 7 smartphones last month, it further blurred the lines between who ultimately controls your phone, or computer, car or appliance: you, or the companies that make it work?

Industry executives and analysts say companies are exerting greater remote control over their devices - changing how and whether they work, removing or adding software and content, or collecting personal data from them - not always with permission or with the user's best interests at heart.

"(The Samsung case) is exactly an example of how devices ... are no longer objects we own, but rather services we've subscribed to and which can be revoked at a moment's notice," said Stefano Zanero, an Italian computer security expert.

GivingTuesday Roundup: 12 Places To Find Answers To Most Common Designer Questions

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”

Steve Jobs was an intelligent man. I always remember this saying from him when I create my own designs.He was absolutely right that we should not confuse a concept of design with how things look only. It’s primarily, how things work. Until and unless your product adds value to its surroundings, it cannot be considered efficiently designed, no matter how incredible it looks. So every graphic designer has to stop at some point and think really hard how his skills and knowledge of design is helping the world become a little more coherent and attractive for the people.

Elements Plus - plugins

Independent author Andrei Doubrovski has announced Elements+ 1.0, his new enhancement patch for Adobe Photoshop Elements 8. Elements+ is a handy add-on that unlocks the undocumented advanced functions in Photoshop Elements featured in the latest versions of Photoshop.

Elements+ is JavaScript-based, so the script behavior will depend on current circumstances. The unleashed features can be accessed via dedicated dialog boxes that include undocumented commands and panels for exploring and using the hidden (officially unsupported) contents, such as paths, color channels, and more. The kit includes smart filters, vector masks, and many more advanced tools normally hidden under the hood.

Image Framer

Apparent Software's ImageFramer 2.42, is a very cool custom image framing utility for Mac OS X. With a focus on ease-of-use, ImageFramer can apply photo-realistic frames to digital images, drawings or any original artwork. Users can add single frames (with multiple mats), watermarks, batch process several images at a time, as well as colorize or adjust Hue, Saturation and Brightness of the frames for maximum flexibility.

Image Framer

Photo + Graphics Bundle for Mac

Apparent Software has launched the MacGraPhoto bundle -- Mac users get 7 premium graphics applications for the price of one -- or even for free. Applications in MacGraPhoto bundle will satisfy most of imaging needs of any Mac user: image editing, applying effects, format conversion, batch processing, vector drawing, geo-tagging photos, framing them or even creating posters and postcards.

Most Mac bundles lack focus - they collect unrelated applications, and many Mac users usually need only a couple of them. MacGraPhoto bundle is focused exclusively on graphics: it is a hand-picked selection of 7 premium applications from 7 different companies. Most of these applications received Apple "Staff Pick" or Apple Design Award.