UbuTab Case Study: How to be Taken Seriously
I was taking a look at the ubutab which is supposedly an upcoming Ubuntu/Android tablet that failed to meet its indegogo campaign goal last month. A couple of things about this site just make me sad. I see a lot of shady businesses with no SSL during checkout, no real email address, and a lazy themes for their site all the time. I am not sure if they are just lazy, don’t care, or a combination of both. This post is really a PSA. The 1990’s are over. People expect a higher level of quality in your product, your website, and your brand. If you are launching a new product here are a few tips to be taken seriously.
Use a Real Email Address
Use an Email Address at your own domain. It is not difficult to have a custom domain for your email address. Gandi gives them away for free when you purchase a domain. Having a custom domain instead of free email makes your company seem more legitimate.Don’t Send Customers to Paypal
Use a payment processing system or at least something like stripe that it integrated to your website instead of redirecting users to a paypal checkout page that sends their payment to a company that has a different name from your own. This is just silly. I would love to have a tablet that runs Ubuntu. But this entire operation just screams scam to me. It will be interesting to see if they actually release a product later on this year.Update:
It looks like the actual site was taken down. You can see an archive of the site here.Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- The contagion of fear from The Observation Deck
- The revolt of the reader from The Observation Deck
- Deeper dive: Were Touch Bar’s problems software rather than hardware? from Unsung
- Joining Cursor from Fatih Arslan
- Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
- The default person from https://popagandhi.com/
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
“It Gives Great Demo”
There’s that famous video of Steve Jobs explaining why they don’t didn’t make touchscreen MacBooks: We thought about [a touch screen MacBook] years ago. We’ve done tons of user testing on this and it turns out it doesn’t work! Touch surfaces don’t want to...
via Jim Nielsen’s Blog November 4, 2026On the road for 8 months: Retrospective
My Trip around the world is now almost 8 months-in. Crazy to look back at the times and all the (36!) Countries I’ve visited, sometimes a day, sometimes almost 2-months! I have now turned 26, and am writing this blog on a phone in a café in Warsaw, Poland....
via Junwoo Hwang November 4, 2026The Trump Era is Collapsing and Big Tech is Officially On Notice
Cycles Hyped No More on November 4, 2026 The American electorate has spoken. And it’s not just MAGA Trumpism which has been repudiated, but the unseemly reign of douchebag techbroism. Cycles Hyped No More is a monthly column by Jared White where he takes a...
via The Internet Review November 4, 2026Generated by openring