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Elwood Edwards, voice of AOL's 'you've got mail' alert, has died
- Chihuahua0633 2y agoOnly made $200 for his voice recordings.
- jprd 2y agoThat sucks, but he's also now immortal.
- GauntletWizard 2y agoIs he, though? When was the last time you heard that sound?
- mikestew 2y agoYou’ll hear it every time you watch one of his movies. He has four movie credits, and some TV, most as “You’ve Got Mail voice”. And he has his own IMDB page. That’s probably more immortal than I’m going to be. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0249977/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0249977/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
- conkeisterdoor 2y agoAbout 30 minutes ago, it has been my Gmail notification sound for a few years :)
- toomuchtodo 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwood_Edwards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwood_Edwards
- gaws 2y agoGood-Bye
- joecool1029 2y agoIn case you just want to hear it: https://www.myinstants.com/en/instant/youve-got-mail/ https://www.myinstants.com/en/instant/youve-got-mail/
- kristianp 2y agoI always assumed that voice was one of those fake UI they do in the movies, in the movie "You've got mail".
- jgrahamc 2y agoFor a while it was possible to pay Elwood Edwards to record a short message (https://web.archive.org/web/20080613203307/http://www.makinwavs.com/ 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 https://getpopfile.org). You can listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/mail-classified-by-popfile https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/mail-classified-b... I paid $30 for that. And him saying "Use the source, Luke!"
- dionian 2y agohes got a great voice! thanks for sharing
- jgrahamc 2y agoOoh. I found the original email from him. From: VoicePro@aol.com Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 22:16:04 -0500 Subject: Your files :) Hi, John. Thanks for your order. Here are your files... and I included a "You've got mail, John" file, too. Enjoy!! El Edwards So, now I can upload "Use the source, Luke!" (https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/use-the-source-luke https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/use-the-source-lu...) and "You've got mail, John!" (https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/youve-got-mail-john https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/youve-got-mail-jo...).
- atonse 2y agoWhat a cool piece of internet history. (And awesome that he was a good sport) JGC, you seem to be one of those people that always has a finger in many little internet trivia things. I'd be bold to say, almost like a Forrest Gump of the internet.
- jgrahamc 2y agoI just have a high-degree of curiosity and a tendency to email random people and see if they'll respond. And I got on the Internet in 1986 so I've been around a while. Fun story about that. Back in 1996 Nicholas Negroponte wrote a column in Wired lamenting the fact that laptop batteries didn't show their charge state. This mattered because all of us who travelled a lot carried multiple batteries to switch them in our laptops (some laptops could have two batteries at once allowing hot swapping without a shutdown). See: https://web.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/Wired/WIRED4-12.html https://web.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/Wired/WIRED4-12.html: "I now carry eight to ten battery packs during long trips. I won't even consider a laptop design that includes unstackable batteries. The fact that most batteries don't indicate their charge state is pathetic." I emailed Negroponte with my solution: before a trip I'd charge all my batteries up (I think I had five) and I had numbered them by writing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on them with a sharpie. Then, I'd simply use them in numerical order. He graciously replied something along the lines of "Sometimes the best solution is the simplest".
- dogsgobork 2y agoGoodbye!
- EvanAnderson 2y agoThe Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast had a episode featuring Mr. Edwards: https://www.20k.org/episodes/youvegotmail https://www.20k.org/episodes/youvegotmail
- kristopolous 2y agoHe was paid piecemeal for the recordings. He drove for Uber later in life. Here's a video on it from Inside Edition: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sN67w6y1uig https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sN67w6y1uig
- bsimpson 2y ago> Just to clarify, I initially received $200 for doing the AOL phrases. Perhaps in my attempts to preserve confidentially, I have given the impression that AOL is cheap..but that is not the case! will only state that my relationship with AOL through the years has been satisfying and rewarding. File's done...Goodbye:)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jervant 2y agoA final "{S goodbye"
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- LorenDB 2y agohttps://archive.ph/bxiFP https://archive.ph/bxiFP
- devmor 2y agoGoodbye!
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoWe used the same voice in GE's BusinessTalk system. I think BT and AOL shared a codebase. Not sure which was first.
- classichasclass 2y agoPretty sure it was BT and AppleLink (disclosure: my article): https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/03/an-apple-district-managers-macintosh.html https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/03/an-apple-district-manage...
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoYes. We actually ran AppleLink. I just remember that we had exactly the same “You’ve got mail!”thing. Our UI was also almost identical.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agolove that The Simpsons actually tracked him down to do the "You've Got Leprosy" line. Dedication to the authenticity.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- memtet 2y ago[dead]
- Dalewyn 2y agoIf 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.
- wkat4242 2y agoIn America maybe :). I only know it from the movie. Ps wasn't he the same guy that did the "Welcome to Noviephone, brought to you by the New York Times!" Thing? I always called that to test if international calls were working :)
- nickdothutton 2y agoWhen 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.
- eth0up 2y agoWhen 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.
- dtjohnnymonkey 2y agoIf 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' I wish I could use his voice though! These were sounds of my childhood.
- user3939382 2y agoSadly the Fastmail app wouldn’t let me set a custom notification sound but a few weeks ago I switched a frequent text contact sound to his “You’ve got mail”