Moonshots Beyond the Cloud

Buying an affordable Wi-Fi Android tablet with no cellular data option is a way of getting it for even cheaper. It’s what I did with my Lenovo Tab E7 . The few times I need to use the device on the go, tethering to my Pixel 2 XL is straightforward to set up and use. But Android devices exchange a lot of data even when sitting idle. How to keep data usage under control? By tweaking the tablet’s account synchronization settings I can cut down on cellular data usage by two-thirds . Measuring data usage The first step is to get an idea of how much cellular traffic tethering generates, and how much I can save by playing with the system settings. I did two simple tests to estimate the amount of data usage to expect from the tablet while tethered to the Pixel 2 XL, which has a 4G Vodafone cellular data plan. In the Android settings of the phone, under Settings > Network & internet > Mobile network , a chart tracks how many MB of data have been used. In the tests I compar...

I launched my newsletter on Product Hunt . A few weeks earlier I had announced the newsletter , Practicing Google , and later sent the first three issues. How did launch day go on Product Hunt? It was a dud. Practicing Google on launch day in Product Hunt’s list of the newest submissions. Early results These data summarize the outcome of the launch, which added 2 subscribers to the 30 I had: 3 upvotes on Product Hunt (including the default upvote) 1 user comment on Product Hunt (including the maker’s comment) 0 reviews on Product Hunt 53 Twitter interactions 2 new newsletter subscribers This is not unexpected. Why? Because of an inescapable Catch-22: it takes a platform to build a platform . I don’t have a platform. Twitter is the only social network I use ( Facebook is a deal breaker ) and my over 2700 followers are just not enough. Such an audience generates an average of a few interactions per tweet, not enough for any substantial promotion. This blog is 7 month...