Just when you thought pictures of your email was over the top, someone had to go and take it even further. Instead of rendering your email to a PNG image, let's render it to audio.

TIP

Version 5 of the Microsoft Speech Object Library is installed by default under Windows XP Professional, so you won't need to install it again if you're running XP Pro.

The Code

Save the following code to a file named mail2mp3.pl somewhere on your PC hard drive, and follow the configuration instructions from :

#!c:\perl\bin\perl.exe

use strict;
use Cwd;
use File::Copy;
use File::Path;
use File::Spec;
use Mail::POP3Client;
use Mail::Internet;
use LWP::Simple;
use Win32;
use Win32::OLE;
use Win32::OLE::Const qq{Microsoft Speech Object Library};

use constant DESTINATION  => q{D:\MP3\TiVo};
use constant PREVIEW_LINES => 30;

my @accounts = (
 {
 DESC   => q{thoellri@foobar.com},
 USER   => "thoellri",
 AUTH_MODE => "PASS",
 PASSWORD => "password",
 HOST   => "pop3.foobar.com"
 },
 {DESC   => q{tobias@somewhere.com},
 USER   => "tobias",
 AUTH_MODE => "PASS",
 PASSWORD => "password",
 HOST   => "mail.somewhere.com"
 },
);

for my $account (@accounts) {
 # erase existing messages
  rmtree([ File::Spec->catfile(DESTINATION, qq{Email}, $account->{DESC}) ],↵
    0, 0);
  my $pop = new Mail::POP3Client (%$account);
  unless ($pop) { warn "Couldn't connect\n"; next; }
  my $count = $pop->Count;
  if ($count <0) { warn "Authorization failed"; next; }
  next if($count == 0); # no new messages
 # create new directory for messages
  mkpath([ File::Spec->catfile(DESTINATION, qq{Email}, $account->{DESC}) ],↵
    0, 0711);
  for my $num (1..$count) {
    my @preview=$pop->HeadAndBody($num,100);
    my $mail=Mail::Internet->new(\@preview);
    my $mp3file=mail2mp3($mail);
    next unless defined($mp3file);
    my $out=File::Spec->catfile(DESTINATION, qq{Email}, $account->{DESC},
                  qq{message-}.sprintf("%02d",$num).qq{.mp3});
    copy($mp3file,$out);
    unlink($mp3file);
  }
  $pop->Close;
}

sub mail2mp3 {
  my($m)=@_;
  my $header=$m->head(  );
  my $type=Win32::OLE->new('SAPI.SpAudioFormat');
  $type->{Type}=SAFT32kHz16BitMono;
  my $stream=Win32::OLE->new('SAPI.SpFileStream');
  $stream->{Format}=$type;
  $stream->Open("output$$.wav",SSFMCreateForWrite,undef);
  my $speech=Win32::OLE->new('SAPI.SpVoice');
  $speech->{AudioOutputStream}=$stream;
  $speech->Speak(qq{From: }.$header->get('From'),SVSFDefault);
  $speech->Speak(qq{Subject: }.$header->get('Subject'),SVSFDefault);
  my($lines);
  foreach my $line (@{$m->body(  )}) {
    chomp($line);
    $speech->Speak($line." ",SVSFDefault);
    last if($lines++>= PREVIEW_LINES);
  }
  $speech->WaitUntilDone(-1);
  $stream->Close(  );
  return undef unless (-f "output$$.wav");
 # here we call out to the command line mp3 encode
  system(qq{bladeenc -quiet -nocfg -quit output$$.wav output$$.mp3});
  unlink(qq{output$$.wav});
  return undef unless (-f "output$$.mp3");
  return File::Spec->catfile(getcwd,qq{output$$.mp3});
}