Mail Forward is an app that will forward your email from AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo! or from any POP account to Apple Mail, where you can read in greater style and comfort (see an earlier Hawk Wings post for screenshots and so forth).

An updated version released today changes the Yahoo! server login sequence for improved reliability and offers preliminary support for Hotmail/MSN Windows Live Mail beta accounts.

Mail Forward is shareware (USD 19.95) and is available from the developer’s web site .

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Over 50 organisations have written an open letter to AOL asking it to rethink plans to use Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail, which the letter describes as “a threat to the free and open Internet”.

The groups range across the social and political spectrum from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the Gun Owners of America.

The letter suggests:

This system would create a two-tiered Internet in which affluent mass emailers could pay AOL a fee that amounts to an “email tax” for every email sent, in return for a guarantee that such messages would bypass spam filters and go directly to AOL members’ inboxes. Those who did not pay the “email tax” would increasingly be left behind with unreliable service. Your customers expect that your first obligation is to deliver all of their wanted mail, and this plan is a step away from that obligation.

If you feel strongly about this issue, you can sign the letter as an individual or as an organisation .

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Plaxo, an online contact management service, has released a beta version of its plugin for Address Book.

The Plaxo service allows you to synchronise contact information, to update the information of contacts who are also Plaxo members automatically and to ask for updated contact information from others.

The idea is to keep ahead of the endless changes in phone numbers and email addresses that cause you gradually to lose contact with people.

With the plugin much of the work of keeping your contact information current is made automatic. Its preferences allow you to “set and forget” the synchronisation and update options. It also adds a collapsable pane to each Address Book contact that enables you to manually request an update on contact information and displays a history of your communication with that person (this feature is “coming soon”).

Last year Plaxo struck a deal with AOL to manage the contact information for AOL’s Triton Instant Messaging application. Unlike some other apps, Plaxo has also opened up its API to third-party developers.

Services like this are not for everyone. It’s not for me. Despite Plaxo’s strong privacy policy, I’m not happy loading up my contact information into some third-party’s database.

Oddly, I do almost the same thing hourly with iSync and don’t think twice about it. Somehow I trust Apple more. I’m such a babe-in-the-woods.

But if you are interested in testing out a service like this (you can delete your Plaxo account and all your information entirely if you change your mind), download the beta of Plaxo’s Address Book plugin and give it a try.

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MacFreePOPs is a stand-alone app which allows you to use Mail.app with web-based mail services like Yahoo, hotmail, Gmail, AOL and SquirrelMail.

An updated version (1.6) has been released. It includes a more recent version of FreePOPs (0.0.97), an English localisation, a better log window, detailed plug-in information and an improved on-line update system.

MailForward is another utility that does the same job. It is easier to use, but it costs money.

MacFreePOPs is donation-ware and is available from the project’s web site .

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A little while ago AOL decided to charge organisations and companies for guaranteed delivery of fully-hyperlinked and imaged emails in users’ inboxes.

A New York Times article described it as “a major change in the economics of the Internet”.

Many saw this a bad thing. Some because it looks like a naked grab for cash , others because it creates a two-tier email system, others because they view it as an attack on free speech (SpamHaus too), others because it might be anti-competitive, putting another squeeze on small businesses but easily absorbed by larger corporations.

Seth Godin, however, puts his head up above the parapet and provides a robust defence of the idea.

It’s all about friction, apparently. He concludes that everyone’s a winner. The only people who will lose are spammers and marketers who measure tonnage.

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AOL now charges companies and organizations money to ensure that their emails arrive in AOL members’ inboxes.

Previously AOL used a free IP-based “Enhanced White List”. Senders that observed best practice in their email habits could be (mostly) sure that their emails would reach AOL customers.

According to a report on ClickZNews , companies must now sign up for accreditation with Goodmail, an “email delivery assurance business” that charges “accredited companies a fraction of a cent per message sent”. Otherwise their emails may not arrive, or will arrive with hyperlinks and images disabled.

Slashdot reports that Yahoo is expected to follow suit.

Is this a bad thing? An investor in a rival delivery assurance company thinks so

And so it’s a sad day for email. The spammers have won. They have turned email delivery into a business that can be bought and sold for the highest price.

Or is it a win for customers in the end, as AOL Postmaster Charles Stiles says in the ClickZNews report?

Our focus and goal here is to provide a safer and more secure environment for our consumers, and restore some trust in the e-mail inbox.

UPDATE: According to the New York Times , the charge for using this new service ranges between .25 and 1 cent an email.

The article also suggests that

the move to create what is essentially a preferred class of e-mail is a major change in the economics of the Internet.

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