For a while it was possible to pay Elwood Edwards to record a short message (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080613203307/http://www.makinwavs.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20080613203307/http://www.makinw...</a>). In 2002, I had him record "Mail classified by POPFile" for my POPFile machine learning email classifier (<a href="https://getpopfile.org" rel="nofollow">https://getpopfile.org</a>).<p>You can listen to it here: <a href="https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/mail-classified-by-popfile" rel="nofollow">https://soundcloud.com/john-graham-cumming/mail-classified-b...</a><p>I paid $30 for that. And him saying "Use the source, Luke!"
He was paid piecemeal for the recordings.<p>He drove for Uber later in life. Here's a video on it from Inside Edition:<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sN67w6y1uig" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sN67w6y1uig</a>
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.<p>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.
In case you just want to hear it: <a href="https://www.myinstants.com/en/instant/youve-got-mail/" rel="nofollow">https://www.myinstants.com/en/instant/youve-got-mail/</a>
The Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast had a episode featuring Mr. Edwards: <a href="https://www.20k.org/episodes/youvegotmail" rel="nofollow">https://www.20k.org/episodes/youvegotmail</a>
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.
If I'm running a command in the background, and want to be notified when it's done, I usually run it like<p><pre><code> cmd; say 'files done'
</code></pre>
I wish I could use his voice though! These were sounds of my childhood.
Sadly 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”
If the early internet had a voice it was definitely his, "You got mail!" is iconic.<p>I'm a sad panda hearing that he passed. Rest in peace, and thank you.