Ecco is orphaned (abandoned) software.  It was developed by Arabeque Software and first offered as a “new Windows 3.0” program around the launch of Win3 in early 1993.  Ecco garnered immediate attention due to its comparative speed, flexibility and “drag and drop fluidity”, and seemed like a shoe-in as “Microsoft partner for life” with the promise of tight Windows integration and co-location a stone’s throw from Microsoft. In 1992 Microsoft was working frantically to morph DOS into Windows.  Apple was making huge inroads into the personal computer (PC) market with it’s new mouse-driven Graphic User Interface (GUI) desktop computer “The MacIntosh” and Microsoft needed software that could show off Windows capabilities.  Ecco was the right software at the right time and as awards flooded in, sales took off .   For reasons not yet clearly understood, Arabesque sold the ground-breaking and award-winning software (true statements, not just marketing hype) around the time of Windows 95 launch.  New owner NetManage gave Ecco TCP/IP, or in lay persons terms “Internet chops”, and Ecco was becoming Outlook before there was Outlook. In 1997 things changed.  MS released a full (~$250) version of Outlook for free, NetMange caved and Ecco was killed.  But not really.  Later in 1997 and onward, NetManage offered Ecco free-to-use with downloads which included serial number, documentation and full Install package.  The practice continued until NetManage was sold, at which time various Ecco users and companies continued support and development. Over a 10 year period - from 1997 to 2007 - various utilities, add-ons and extenders (To-Do’s --> Is there a difference between ‘extender’ and ‘add-on’?  If so, what?) were developed and a collective intelligence and understanding about how Ecco’s internals worked unraveled bit by bit.  A company called eccoTools (To-Do’s --> fact-check this)  satisfied the Ecco world with a series of software add-ons that extended the use of Ecco’s memory (Ecco’s Achilles heal) and gave Ecco full Internet ‘Surf & Clip’ abilities. In 2007 another Ecco bomb dropped.  This time it came as a random announcement from someone going by the screen name “slangmgh”.  Slang had developed an extension (EE) which, in an integrated fashion, gave Ecco v. 4 upgrades that brought it to arguably a version 5.  Over the next 8 years Slang would post upgrades of his EE and the Ecco community would beta test new features and offer suggestions, and bringing the effort to what many consider is a version 7. Slang has stopped development.  We hope this is a break and he is waiting for the rest of us to catch up. You can think of the EverEcco template project as a response to Slang’s call.  There is scant little documentation for all of Slang’s efforts and until now, EE’s toolset has not been fully explained nor exploited, Ecco’s memory structure is still a mystery to most and an end-user can still innocently crash Ecco with a click or two. By employing ‘extend text’ folders, simple rules and a different approach to work flow, EverEcco makes Ecco’s memory issues almost invisible.  But development is needed to keep Ecco’s limited memory registers from hitting overload during normal use.  This is possible and I argue it should be done because it can and because Ecco is still a unique and coveted software - for those who know about it. To conclude, the EverEcco project can and will be a magnet for a new generation of users.  MyPhoneExplorer, MultiView and other apps are key elements and once the EverEcco template project gets its Forum home, we users and ‘fans of’ can collectively start making noise about “the missing link” super-PIM.