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.
Most popular posts this month
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- 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/
- No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
- Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
The Bulldozing of an Interface
Marcin Wichary has a lovely article titled “Photoshop’s challenges with focus, pt. 2”. If you’re into the minutiae of interface design, this is a good ‘un. It perfectly illustrates how impossible it is to try and compare two interfaces side by side as stat...
via Jim Nielsen’s Blog September 8, 2026Anthony Hobday’s design references
Anthony Hobday is a product designer and I like his approach of cataloging and sharing references on his website. Here are some choice pages: Uncommon, but useful design terms Notes on software quality and What is good craftspersonship? Notes on visual des...
via Unsung September 8, 2026OpenBSD VPS for $5 a Year
OpenBSD VPS for $5 a Year 2026-09-08 I believe I have found the cheapest VPS provider on the internet. It costs just ~$5 per year! You read that right. Not $5 per month or even quarterly. That is the total annual cost. Best of all, OpenBSD is natively supp...
via btxx.org RSS Feed September 8, 2026Generated by openring