How do I send email in 24 different colors with pictures of my puppy, then? A more serious restatement of the joke: Other than HTML email, there is no function

How do I send email in 24 different colors with pictures of my puppy, then? A more serious restatement of the joke: Other than HTML email, there is no functional way for the average computer user to send personal information with the following properties: 1. Rich text with embedded images (you know... HTML) 2. available at work without running into firewall or security restrictions (Websense) 3. Easy enough to compete with email. 4. Cheap enough to the end user to compete with email. 5. Secure enough to allay concerns about personal information making it out into the wild. (Never mind that email is easily interceptable: there is a perception versus reality problem here.) A web application isn't going to do it. It's just too painful to attach more than two photos. A separate application isn't going to do it -- what corporate IT department is going to install it? Livejournal comes close for tech-savvy people, but it's not in the average user's current skill level. It's a fundamenally hard problem for social rather than technical reasons, and that is why people use HTML in email, and that is why vendors support it. Reducing it to a technical problem doesn't help.