You've Got Mail Mac OS
Okay, it’s fair to say that I was struggling to fill my lunch hour yesterday, and one thing that I’ve wanted to do for a number of years was trigger the awesomely-cool “You’ve got mail” voice when I get new emails on my computer. If, like me, you were never one who actually used AOL as a service provider (and why would you), then your best bet is to think of the film of the same name starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
Grows and turns yellow when new mail is received, and if we use Messenger as well, we can persuade that app to pop toast up from that same tray whenever new mail arrives. Again, I don't know whether these features are available on a Mac OS. You'd be better off asking in a Mac forum, I think.-Noel. One of the things I've always liked about Apple's Mail application is that when new messages arrive, Mail's Dock icon tells you how many. However, one limitation of this feature is that the number.
The basis of this trick is going to be achieved through Mac Mail’s ability to have a rule which triggers an AppleScript script. We’ll come back to that, first of all it’s time to play with Mac OS’s text to speech feature…
Support me and get thousands of sounds: Downloadlink: you have problems download. $ say 'Youve got mail' You should hear a manly computer voice saying “ You’ve got mail” to you hopefully. Notice that the wording is wrapped in apostrophes but there’s no apostrophe between the you and the ve of you’ve.
Give your computer a voice
Fire up terminal (it can be found in Applications > Utilities if you’re unsure) and type the following to test out the text-to-speech functionality (bear in mind that you’ll need your volume turned up!):
You should hear a manly computer voice saying “You’ve got mail” to you hopefully. Notice that the wording is wrapped in apostrophes but there’s no apostrophe between the you and the ve of you’ve. This is not grammatically correct, I know, but it still gets read correctly and it helps us to write it like that for when we get to the AppleScript portion of the lecture (and yes, it is a lecture). You can choose from a whole host of voices to use, a list of which can be shown by typing:
Then when you settle on one – I chose whisper – the finished bash command should be something along the lines of:
Writing the AppleScript script
Now it’s time to put it into a very simple script that we can then trigger from Mac Mail. To do this we’ll be using AppleScript Editor, which is found under Applications > Utilities > AppleScript Editor. Open the editor up and type the following into the top box:
Essentially it’s what we typed into terminal earlier but preceded by do shell script and wrapped in quotes (hence what we did with apostrophes earlier). The code will appear purple until you press the ‘Compile’ icon on the toolbar above, and if that works you should see your do shell script text appear in a bold navy-blue and the rest of the text becoming black. Now save the file somewhere memorable being sure to choose the file format “Script”.
Setup the rule in Mac Mail
Now if you fire up Mac Mail and go to Mail > Preferences > Rules and click “Add Rule”, configure the rule as shown below, replacing your email address and the path to the AppleScript script you saved above:
Save the rule and give it a test run, you should find that just as new emails come in your computer says “You’ve got mail”. Job done. I’m sure it won’t get annoying…
America Online Inc. today delivered the next version of the company’s service designed for Mac OS X.
AOL for Mac OS X includes a streamlined design; new e-mail features; the ability to play and embed sounds in an email and share them with other AOL Mac users; the ability to attach files by dragging and dropping them into the email attachment window; and ability to enter every e-mail address in a single box and change the delivery type for each address (to/cc/bcc) with a click.
Users can also have the text of instant messages (as well as chat and e-mail) and buttons under their cursor read aloud using built in speech synthesis. AOL has also added new localized content and new entertainment features.
“As part of our ongoing support of the Macintosh market, we are excited to launch the new version of our flagship AOL service,” said Peter Ashkin, President of Product Strategy for America Online. “America Online has a long and valued relationship with Apple and we wanted to provide compatibility with Apple’s next-generation operating system. On the heels of Apple’s recent launch of AirPort, which provides a way for AOL members to access the AOL service through a wireless LAN, we’ll continue to look for opportunities to extend the AOL experience to the Mac community by programming the AOL service in ways that enhance the Macintosh user’s experience.”
AOL for Mac OS X features include:
New content and programming features in AOL for Mac OS X include:
You've Got Mail Costar
You've Got Mail Mac Os X
AOL for Mac OS X is available as a free download from America Online’s Web site.