alt Hacker NewsElwood Edwards, voice of AOL's 'you've got mail' alert, has died
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For a while it was possible to pay Elwood Edwards to record a short message (https://web.archive.org/web/20080613203307/http://www.makinw...). In 2002, I had him record "Mail classified by POPFile" for my POPFile machine learning email classifier (https://getpopfile.org).
You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/mail-classified-b...
I paid $30 for that. And him saying "Use the source, Luke!"
He was paid piecemeal for the recordings.
He drove for Uber later in life. Here's a video on it from Inside Edition:
love that The Simpsons actually tracked him down to do the "You've Got Leprosy" line. Dedication to the authenticity.
When emails were infrequent enough that you’d only hear this a few times per day. I feel like setting it up now just to see how irritating it is. RIP EE.
The Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast had a episode featuring Mr. Edwards: https://www.20k.org/episodes/youvegotmail
If I'm running a command in the background, and want to be notified when it's done, I usually run it like
cmd; say 'files done'
We used the same voice in GE's BusinessTalk system. I think BT and AOL shared a codebase. Not sure which was first.
Goodbye!
A final "{S goodbye"
When I was a kid, using AOL with all my friends, I spent a few hours in Soundforge editing a clip of me saying "worms" as close to the AOL tone as possible. I did it pretty convincingly and began distributing the "You've got worms!" notification everywhere I could.
Anyone under 100 will probably think this was really stupid, but it was amusing to me - and all the other silly hacks on windows and such.
If the early internet had a voice it was definitely his, "You got mail!" is iconic.
I'm a sad panda hearing that he passed. Rest in peace, and thank you.
Goodbye!
[dead]
https://archive.ph/bxiFP