Digital

Fantastic Scams and How to Avoid Them

By Anya Ow / January 30, 2020 / 0 Comments

I fell for a scam recently. It was one of those phishing emails, set up to look like something they’re not, leading to a landing page that usually asks you for credit card or personal details. In this case, it was a Woolies email about a “survey that I’d done”, arriving only days after I’d […]

Apps and Advertising

By Anya Ow / September 12, 2019 / Comments Off

It’s Tuesday afternoon in the office. There’s a disbelieving exclamation from the creative department: “Jeremy Renner had an app?” Yes. Jeremy Renner had an app. He’s the actor best known for the archer guy in the Avengers, whose main purpose appears to be mysteriously surviving one apocalypse after another despite just being a vanilla human, […]

Limiting Your Online Footprint

By Anya Ow / June 14, 2019 / Comments Off

After thirty-ish years living on this slow-dying planet with only a vague idea of what the stock market is or how to engage with it, I’ve finally decided to teach myself how to trade. While doing some basic research — like which online stockbroker to use, which stocks are blue chip, what ETFs are, how […]

Podcast ads

By Anya Ow / June 10, 2019 / Comments Off

I’m listening to Pod Save America, an entertaining American Democratic podcast run by ex-Obama staffers. They’re discussing the 2020 Democratic candidates, which, I confess, I’m not really following the discussion closely. I don’t particularly care which candidate ends up the final nominee. The field’s immensely crowded right now and as such, less interesting. It’s sort […]

Adobe and Infringement

By Anya Ow / June 8, 2019 / Comments Off

I just got an email from @Adobe that I'm no longer allowed to use the software that I'm paying for. Time to cancel my subscription I guess. Share plz. pic.twitter.com/ZIIdqK5AkM — Matt Roszak 🍞 (@KupoGames) May 10, 2019 Adobe programs are to creatives what a tennis racquet is for Roger Federer, if there was only […]

Pulling Ads in Protest

By Anya Ow / June 5, 2019 / Comments Off

Every morning, after I feed the cats, make breakfast, I open my MacBook and curse myself. “Twitter,” I say, “what’s the worst thing that happened while I was asleep?” YouTube’s algorithm has been curating home movies of unwitting families into a catalog of semi-nude kids, we found. YT often plays the videos after users watch […]

Google Chrome, HTTPS, and the HTTP Purge

By Anya Ow / February 5, 2019 / Comments Off

Are you browsing a website on Chrome? Head to your website and check out the address bar. If you’re a business, ideally your IT people have already switched over your site from HTTP to HTTPS, given you the nice green lock icon and a ‘Secure’ statement. If they haven’t, or if you have no IT […]

Big Data and Creativity

By Anya Ow / July 7, 2018 / Comments Off

My cat is a purebred Birman, a fluffy fur-shedding machine created to have the temperament and self-preservation instincts of a soft toy. A year ago he ate an unknown substance that gave him acute pancreatitis. After several vet visits, a large bill, and an absolute refusal to switch to a fresh meat diet to save […]