"We've just launched the splash page for the new Email Standards Project website at email-standards.org, which is the future location of a lot of news and resources relating to our push for consistent, reliable web standards support for email..."

"...This much is clear - arguing about HTML vs plain text or complaining about standards support in email isn't going to get us anywhere. It's time to get off our butts and actually help email client manufacturers to introduce better standards support..."

There are many ways to share documents, files and data over the Internet. Among them, emails are often used to do so, because whoever has an email address can send and receive emails freely. People from one mail server to another can communicate without any difficulty. Why is it working so simply? Because emails are designed to use a set of open standards, based on the Internet protocols.

The usual practice of configuring your email client to retrieve email from your ISP's servers works well, but not for all situations. Here's a way you can set up a single machine on your own network to fetch and store your email and serve it to any number of email clients.

"There is an important issue facing the European Commission now with regard to standards, and they need to hear from you. Please support this campaign in favor of open standards by adding your signature on their web page (by 2007 September 15), answering the European Commission's request for comments, and asking your friends and colleagues to do the same..."

The final version of the important Digital Agenda for Europe has been leaked – and shows that the European Commission has betrayed open standards. Where an earlier draft had an entire section headed “Open Standards and Interoperability”, the latest version only uses the word “open” once in the corresponding section “Interoperability and standards.”

Some commenters think I was unfair to IBM in my last post. There I took Big Blue to task for its announcement that it intends to wage war against Microsoft in the world’s standards bodies

Email clients are becoming less and less of a frequently used program. But for some, email applications are still their first choice, one main advantage is the multiple use of accounts at the same time. Here is a list of email applications for Linux that shows many of the email clients available.

I have the information for those of you *who live in Australia* and who wish to send comments to Standards Australia. You can find a link to the template you need to use here. Or just download it. You fill it in and send it to Michael Langdon, Project Manager, Commerce at Standards Australia, michael.langdon at standards.org.au by the deadline, which is Tuesday