Minneapolis Minnesota
April 1st 2011
Serotek, the leading provider of Internet and digital information accessibility software and services, today announced its entrance in to the notetaker market with a product simply named the GTO. The GTO, originally code-named Project Doorstop, aims to resurrect previously existing technology for a second chance at life.
“So many people believe that innovation is about doing something that’s never been done before,”, said Hugh Morris, product manager for the GTO. One thing that hasn’t been done nearly enough is to take seemingly obsolete technology and combine it in new, and perhaps ludicrous ways.” That’s exactly what we’ve done with the GTO. Morris went on to say that though the cost of manufacturing the GTO is extremely low because no one else in the market has use for its parts, consumers will not benefit from this cost reduction. “We’ve spent 3 weeks in hard-core development and testing with this product. We tested it until we got tired of doing so. All that hard work costs the company money, and we’re going to pass that cost along to the consumer tenfold. We’re going to make consumers pay … and pay … and pay!” Mr. Morris then begin cackling maniacally and was unavailable for further comment.
We spoke with Rusty Mettles, lead developer for GTO, to learn more on how the product came about. “I had this closet full of stuff,”, said Mettles. “My mom was going to make me throw it out, and it was in that moment of desperation that I came up with the idea of the GTO. I love the sound of a 14.4KBPS modem connecting, and I didn’t want others to miss out on that beautiful sound. I remember composing research papers using WordPerfect 5.1, and I don’t understand why technology like this has fallen by the wayside. The GTO was my chance to bring it back.”
The GTO already works with several formats familiar to seasoned tech enthusiasts, and boasts specs on par with many previously released devices.
Specifications.
The GTO runs on RISC processors gathered from gently used Game Boy units. This will allow you to play many legacy games that may or may not be accessible.
The unit supports several external storage formats including but not limited to: 3.5 and 5 ¼ inch Floppy drives, bubble memory and tape backup. The unit's internal memory is a roomy 640K, which ought to be enough for anybody. The US Robotics 14.4KBPS modem works on any existing phone line and will connect to any dial up service using the included ProComm Plus software. Telix software is available for an additional fee. Serotek continues to applaud Apple's accessibility efforts, so the Echo 2 synthesizer was the logical choice for text-to-speech on the GTO. Everything about this unit is built to offer consumer choice, so the unit will support 6 popular versions of DOS. We know many out there are tired of having to deal with messy graphics. This way we ensure that almost everything is text-based.
Input on the unit is accomplished through Morse code. Blind ham radio enthusiasts will be ecstatic about this innovation, and those who don't know Morse code should have learned it long since, and will no longer have an excuse to put off acquiring this skill.
The included car battery accessory with alligator clips allows for 20 hours of battery life.
The unit has been tested rigorously by 6 Chimpanzee-Bonobo hybrids, who received bananas and peaches in payment for their hard work. During the testing process, it was discovered that a banana-resistant surface was necessary to maintain the integrity of the unit. This is a feature not present in any other product on the market.
Though the chimps were excellent test subjects, the only intelligible quotes they provided for the press release were: "Peach good. Banana good good." For a more in-depth testimonial, we approached a human user, Ms. Anne Thrope for her thoughts on the GTO. “I despise people”, mumbled Thrope. With this technology, I can legitimately bow out of communicating with people in an effective and timely manner. It’s tremendously liberating!”
The unit is priced at a reasonable $4011, and comes with 2-hour tech support, from 11 AM to 1 PM Eastern Standard Time. We approached Izzy Smart, lead technical support
representative, for his comments on the GTO. "So basically, if they call us and tell us something's wrong, all's we gotta do is tell them to buy another one,", said Smart. "I learned how to do that pretty quick. It was like a couple of weeks, and I totally had it down, ok? And then, like, if they ask us how to do something on the thing, we're supposed to just hang up. I told my boss, I was like, man that's mean! He goes, no way, see, this way we're teaching people to learn to think for themselves. I was like, oh, right on, man! I can dig that!"
We are also proud to announce our newest addition to the Serotek stable today in support of the GTO. The SAMBBS, or System Access mobile Bulletin Board System, will let you connect with your friends and family from just about anywhere you can connect with a land line. Here are just a couple of the revolutionary things you can do on the SAMBBS.
Create documents using WordStar.
Read documentation through Borland, to relearn all that you have forgotten.
Play music files, painstakingly composed using QBasic.
Just dial in, log on and by tomorrow you will be reading email and browsing through files. Downloading files, however, is not supported at this time. This capability is slated for a future release in 2015.
To get a sneak preview of the SAMBBS, use your Telnet client of choice to connect to bbs.samobile.net
Our marketing consultants told us we should at least pretend to care about your input. With that in mind, if you can think of features we should have included in the GTO but didn't, please comment here or call the Serotalk blab line at (866) 997-2522 and we'll give your ideas the attention they deserve.
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8 comments:
Wow, how exciting? Will the GTO feature a Gopher client so I can access the BBS plus all my favorite Gopher sites? That'd be totally rad. Then I could keep up on all the latest cold war happenings, not to mention follow news on missed episodes of Star Search! Sometimes I run out of VHS tapes or forget to press Record, you folks at Serotek know how that goes I'm sure!
Cool, will the GTO include a Gopher client? I see that the BBS supports Gopher, so it would be awesome to access it remotely. I'd also like to keep up with my favorite Gopher sites, and follow all the latest cold war happenings. Sometimes I run out of VHS tapes and can't record the evening news, I'm sure you folks at Serotek know how that goes. Or maybe that's what the G in GTO stands for? If so, then cool on you for embracing the future!
No worries if the initial version doesn't include a Gopher client, however. It is rather cutting-edge tech. If you need a few years and a few more thousand dollars then I understand. I don't really need two kidneys, after all. I also don't know what a spleen is, so I can't imagine that I need it for anything. I'm holding that in reserve in case Freedom Scientific releases something for Windows 3.11, though, so if you really want the spleen too then you'd better support token ring networking.
Good job guys. Really makes a point. I especially like the fact that you set up a BBS for this. :D
As funny as this was, I am reminded of a computer I bought in 1994. It had a 340MB hard drive and 8MB of RAM. It ran DOS and didn't even come with a modem. It had Vocal-eyes for a screen reader, OSCAR to perform OCR, and a new-to-the-market Dec-Talk Express external synthesizer. throw in the HP flatbed scanner, and the price was just over $4,000. My how times have changed!
also, the Echo 2 reference made me laugh out loud. i remember using that synth on an Apple 2E back in 1985. The cool thing about the Echo, as bad as the speech was, was that you could write a program in Basic that could change the pitch, volume and speed of the speech by using character strings. Add in a function that would send random numbers to the character string parameters, and you could make the synthesizer absolutely flip out with constantly and randomly changing pitch, speed and volume. Fun fun fun!
Dear Serotek,
As a blind consumer, I am concerned that this new device is entirely too liberal for the low price you charge. In my opinion, in edition to the limited tech support, you must promise at least a 2 month turnaround time for users who need to submit their devices for repair. Blind people need to understand that their products are incredibly specialized, and giving them prompt service might lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. How dare they ask for things quickly so as to have their lives back in order? They need to understand that they must accommodate the AT companies, and not the other way around.
Also, you failed to mention a yearly hardware SMA, which should not count for the upgrade of any new versions. It is only spent to allow the repair of the current chips, and should not count over christmas break or any other major holidays.
Please promise me you will fix these massive defects with your product. My life as an old curmudgeon who refuses to live in the 21st century with its accessible android, linux, and IOS devices depends on it!
Happy April fools day guys. Nice job!
John
Dear Serotek,
As a blind consumer, I am concerned that this product is far too liberal for the low price you charge. In edition to the limited tech support, you must promise at least a 2 month turnaround time for users who submit their devices for repair. Blind people need to understand that their hardware is incredibly specialized, and giving them the product back too soon might lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. How dare they ask for their computers back soon to keep their lives in order? People need to understand that they must accommodate the AT companies and not the other way around.
You also failed to mention a product SMA. It should be used only to repair the current chips, and should not be valid over christmas or any other holidays. Also, the SMA should not cover any cost of upgrading the original hardware.
Please tell me you will fix these glaring flawes in your product. My life as an old curmudgeon who refuses to live in the 21st century with its accessible IOS, android, and linux devices depends on it!
Happy april fools day guys. Nice job!
John
This spoof is very cute, but it is a bit too reminiscent of some of the actual ads for new note taking devices that I've seen over the past year or two. Thanks for making that point through such a humorous vehicle.
:-) that reminds me of the braillenote empower sitting in front of me now, not being used of course. The school gave it to me, because they don't have enough money to buy the new apex of blind ghetto products. :-)
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