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Comment by AmVess | Hacker News Reader

Sites like this need a tl;ds (too long; didn't scroll) general info right up front. Also...why no price and availability?

General Description: The BRCK is a rugged, cloud managed, full-featured router with built in failover and programmable GPIO expansion. BRCK can connect to the internet through RJ47, GSM, Wifi Bridge, as well as Ethernet Over USB via the GPIO Breakout. It’s rugged build and cloud managed interface make it ideal for “away teams”, monitoring systems in remote locations, and businesses with challenging infrastructure. BRCK’s GPIO breakout provides 20 pins for digital and alaouge Read/Write as well as I2C, SPI and UART. This, combined with BRCK’s Arduino Profile, make it ideal for quickly connecting hardware to the Internet of Things.

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Yeah, we totally missed the mark on this. We live BRCK day in, day out, and sometimes forget that we haven't explained the detail to people well. This comment has prompted us to rewrite our copy and clean up the site a bit. Watch this space over the next few days. Thanks.(Source: I'm the CTO of BRCK)

Just as a counterpoint, I think the naysayers are completely wrong (other than the price and availability comments). The first sentence told me a ton about the device, and I began getting a good sense of what it did on each "page" / scroll section.

> BRCK’s GPIO breakout provides 20 pins for digital and alaouge Read/Write as well as I2C, SPI and UART. This, combined with BRCK’s Arduino Profile, make it ideal for quickly connecting hardware to the Internet of Things.

See, now this is a description that makes me want to own one.

Yes because the regular users/clients know exactly what I2C, SPI and UART is and they will jump on it right away. This isn't really a "for the geeks only" product from what i read so the description will need to be for the geeks and not only, open your market to regular clients and businesses.

A lot of acronyms and you are ready to buy?

consider perhaps that he knows what they mean and how he can apply them.... maybe?!

What's RJ47? Wouldn't cheap cell phones with 3G and WiFi hotspot negate the need for another device to carry?

It looks like RJ47 is an analogue connection using an RJ45 connector. Not much info on it out there, but I expect this describes its wiring: http://www.talkaudio.co.uk/ipb/index.php/topic/102601-rj47-w...

RJ47 is ethernet.

When did it go up two points? Last time I checked it was RJ45.

I guess more people value the internet now so naturally RJ is going to rise. ;)

edit: Oh. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070313080701AA...

The selected Yahoo Answer is wrong. RJ11 is for phones, RJ45 ethernet, and RJ47 is either a typo or a part number or something.

More specifically, its the 'connector' piece of the cable, not really the ethernet. It stands for Registered Jack-47 and is more or less a standardization for 'connectors' or jacks.

If there is such a thing as Registered Jack 47, it's gotta be the most obscure engineering standard on the planet.

Based on the context, I'm not sure they even meant to say RJ45, since they mention Ethernet over USB elsewhere in the blurb.

edit: They explicitly say 10/100 RJ45 port later, so it's probably just a typo.

Yeah, super obscure. It does exist but rarely mentioned.

http://www.discount-low-voltage.com/Connectivity/Shielded-Pl...

Incontrovertible evidence. Thanks!

No it's not. RJ45 is what you're thinking of.

We meant RJ45, typo being fixed.

Wow this description is quite surprising. I thought they were a software consulting firm based somewhere in Africa. =/

They're based in Nairobi and they run a technology innovations lab there.

To be fair, the site was designed to accompany a kickstarter campaign I believe, which ran a few months ago and would have had all of that info up front.

The original (successful) campaign is here on kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776324009/brck-your-bac...

Seriously, this hipster "design" insanity has to stop. It's hurting your business.

A pretty picture of your product is not design, it's a dream of a first year art school student who doesn't understand business, who doesn't understand how to send the message and how to describe the product.

Your opinion. I think it looks fine. I quite like the 'long scroll' format that's become popular recently. All my devices (MacBook, Android phone etc.) make scrolling simpler than finding and clicking a link. And I feel like I got the main proposition of the product pretty quickly, without having to click around various 'features' and 'specs' pages.

I quite dislike any format that does not provide me immediately with a 2 or 3 sentence general description of what the thing is about, of the sort like you would find at the beginning of a Wikipedia article or in the parent comment (but with a bit less detail).

Taking BRCK as an example, I see "It's the easiest, most reliable way to connect to the Internet." and some picture suggesting that this is a hardware device. Insufficient. If I page down it gets even more confusing.

I have to agree. Excuse my language, but I didn't know wtf it is precisely on the main page. I have to dig into the Specs page for the description of the device. Wasted my time with frustrated layout. Failed design fails.

I agree, but I think it's more this specific implementation than the concept itself. I've seen plenty of "long-scroll" (not sure what to call it) style sites that have been absolutely amazing at dumping information into my head.

For example, http://www.apple.com/iphone-5c/

Bad example imo. A good one would have been http://www.apple.com/iphone-5c/features/ which doesn't break scrolling AND gives hard facts.

Agreed - worst thing you can do on a long scrolling page is hijack the ability to scroll like that!

I think this site works as a marketing tool. It has strong branding, and it automatically makes me feel more interested in the product even though I don't have any personal use for it.

I don't think it works as a news brief. I had to read the whole page to figure out what the thing does. Of course, it looks like they're selling it as a black box that makes the Internet happen, so maybe the technical details aren't such a big deal.

If I could have figured out anything beyond its buzzword compliance, that would have been super. I could tell it was some sort of router with some dependability, beyond that it all looked like vaporware.

I scrolled like 10 pages and didn't learn a single thing about the device.

I disagree. They've got an attractive presentation. Perhaps the new layouts are a little gimicky these days; no doubt they'll eventually be pared down to something that is minimal but has the same spirit. Nonetheless, I think what these guys have put together is quite attractive and communicates exactly what they want to communicate about themselves and their product.

I actually liked the picture, it illustrates one segment of the target audience very well. A bit like the camera GoPro showing a picture of a surfer in a wave.

The website misses more specific details about how it works, when it will be available and how much it will cost. I can't wait for this thing to hit the market!

In general devices that actually produce pictures can get away with showing pretty pictures foremost and convey a "it's so fun" overall athmosphere before focusing on the device itself. For a rugged router, this approach is less forgiving IMO.

GoPro is an established product, I've never met anybody from their target audience who didn't know what it is.

I am a target audience for BRCK, and from looking at their page, it's not clear to me at all what it is.

Do you have any proof that this hurts the business? They may have lost a sale to you but gained 10 others.

It's fine dude, relax. I had no problem understanding the product because of their website design.

And yet here we are talking about it on HN.

(the point being that as shallow as the design may be, it caused people to share it and upvote it, so chastising the marketing is a bit odd)

Are you making that up as an example, or is that the actual description?

That's copied straight from the Specs section[1].

[1] http://www.brck.com/specifications/

It's from their website. I'm not sure why I'd make that up.

Thanks; I wasn't able to find it, which is why I was unsure whether you were quoting or paraphrasing. :)

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