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Mega-ISP Update: Layoffs At AOL, Voices At MSN
rfc1394 writes: "There are two articles, the first article, in today's Washington Post, mentioned that AOL, having successfully digested Time Warner, is producing results of that digestion by additionally extruding almost 1,000 people in layoffs due to an anemic advertising market and a need to meet projected revenue goals of about $40 billion.
A separate Post article mentions how Microsoft's online service MSN is having a woman named Shelley Reynolds create a series of spoken identifiers for its online service similar to AOL's famous 'You've got mail!' and identifies El Edwards as the man who is the voice behind the phrase. The second article also tells about the effect of sound on people with respect to technology, and the payments involved (Edwards reportedly got about $100; Reynolds will receive something under six figures.)"
Edwards got $100 initially, and the WAVs sounded like they were recorded on an old Magnecord PT6 reel recorder. the original WAVs had some component of a whistle up to speed leading them all, indicating they started the tape and pointed a cue, instead of rolling tape continuously, cueing the announcements, and putting nonmagnetic leader tape in between for cleaner digitization. so when AOL 3.0 came out, they rehired Edwards to reprise the tags, and he got considerably more... I have heard something in the $25,000 range. they also got the whistles out.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"Who could have foreseen something like this happening," said Elwood Edwards. "Years ago my wife worked at AOL and asked me to record the greetings for the company. Now, as I think about the millions of AOL members who consider me as the 'mailman' of cyberspace, I'm amazed. I'm pleased that I've had a small part in making the computer world smaller and more personable."
Edwards has recently started his own business doing voice-overs for commercial and business broadcasts, radio and television. More information about Elwood Edwards and his voice-over services can be found at his Website:
http://members.aol.com/voicepro.
At $100 for his services, Mr. Edwards received $14 and change per word for "You've Got Mail," "Welcome," "Goodbye," and "File's done." This woman is not only saying "Good morning," "Good afternoon," "Good evening," and "Goodbye," she's also going to address people by NAME. According to the article, she's reading over 10,000 names, including alternate pronunciations. That's at least 10,007 words. $14 x 10,007 is over $100,000 already.
MSN is getting a bargain.
For more information, click here.
They also need to come up with some soothing, high positive energy Aquarius phrases for the following:
"This application has performed an illegal operation and will be shutdown"
"Please wait"
"Would you like to reboot now?"
"We are going to MSN today"
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Why pay someone 5+ figures for their voice when you can just copy any voice? I guess these Microsoft guys really don't read slashdot enough
3 25 3&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/31/133
(Edwards reportedly got about $100; Reynolds will receive something under six figures.)
Ed...
"You've got screwed!"
der dee der.
I'll sign up for the ISP that starts geek voice-overs.
/var/mail/you is empty-- get some friends!"
"Dude,
AOL would offend far fewer people if they just had some honest commercials.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
Does it seem odd to anyone else that this article about the new voice for MSN is about three times longer than the one about the DMCA and Dimitri from the other day?
I guess we can see where the press' priorities are.
"It picks up a certain audio decibel [...]"
What kind of non-sentence is that? Isn't that like saying that a bouler has "a certain mass kilogram"?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
AOL: "You've got mail!"
MSN/Win9x: "You've got mail! Now go tell your friends to use MSN!.
MSN/WinXP: "You've got mail! Click here to pay $0.35 to read the first 1024 characters..."
Got Rhinos?
"I honestly believe I have enough positive energy ? this is totally an Aquarius-type deal ? if I record these things thinking very positively, I kind of believe metaphysically it cheers people up. They'll get a positive hit," Reynolds says.
I think Ms. Reynolds has taken a few too many positive hits herself.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I remember when Microsoft used to pay college professors only $200 to talk about them.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
MSN- "You've got mail, are you sure you want to read it?"
USER- *click yes*
MSN- "Are you sure?"
USER- *click yes again*
MSN- "You must reboot"
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Its what you call stock value manipulation. Basically you fire people to make the profits seem larger and hence get high stock value. From I understand CISCO tried the same thing and it back fired on them, ie the stock value still took a hit. This is one of the problems with public companies, and probably the reason it can go bad after the IPO, since they concentrate on stock value instead of the product.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
During the boom, even companies that didn't want to grow (that is, wanted to build up existing markets instead of trying to rush into new ones and buy companies, etc.) were pretty much forced into it by shareholder expectations. And now shareholder expectations are working the other way - even solvent companies with working business models are compelled to cut back spending and lay people off, just because that's what "analysts" want to see.
And it will only get worse.