Wednesday, November 22

Rural alternative to Yahoo! emerges.

Pippa Passes, KY — (FP) For country-dwelling folk like Dwayne Earl, the internet maintains an almost mythlike existence. Words like E-mail, HTML, and Javascript might as well be a foreign language to the hardworking souls of a place like Pippa Passes (population: 297). For Earl, communication comes only via his mailbox or by the lone telephone at Ruby's Pie Stop on Booger Branch Road, just off Kentucky Route 899.

"Them there internets sure sound like tricky business to me." Earl exclaimed. "Some feller tried to tell me about a modem. I told 'em that's what I did when my weeds gots too tall."

But all that is about to change. Yeehaw! A revoultionary new communications service is set to launch in rural areas like Pippa Passes. Yeehaw! is the brainchild of former University of Kentucky quarterback Deke Guttrick. Guttrick saw how those living in the more bucolic reaches of society were often ignored by new technologies, and sought to offer them a similar experience with a less technological makeup.

"Wires can't go up Cooter Hollow Pass. The kudzu is just too damned thick! And don't you tell me about gettin' a DSL line out to Scary Larry Harper's shack. You come near that place, and he about done blowed your head off already."

Without cutting-edge technology, Guttrick had to rely on rustic know-how to help devise Yeehaw!'s growing cache of tools. That's why Yeehaw! features old-fashioned 'proprietary' features like YellMail™, CoonFinder™, and Yeehaw! Blog Logs™, which are notes scribbed on buckskin and rolled-up into hollowed-out logs, then tossed into the rapids of Whipshit Creek for delivery.

"We're still working on our version of podcasting, which uses fishing poles and frogs." Guttrick said.