"avatar" on email

The good news is that you can change it by going to Address Book, opening your card, and changing the picture there.

The bad news is that this is a purely local display for your benefit: the picture is not attached to outgoing emails. If you want to subject your recipients to your happy smiling face you will have to do it as an attachment, or in the signature (drag an image to the box in which you type your signature).

Yes. But that image is not being sent through that e-mail. Mail.app looks in Address Book to see if there is any picture associated with the contact that sent you the e-mail, and then displays it.

Just to add on to what Roger said...

Although it is confusing at first, the picture is there for your benefit. "I know what I look like," you say? Yes, bit it does that for every email address that has an associated photo. For many people, that means... no one else.

But, if everyone were using .Mac (I do not) it seems that Mail and Address Book cooperate and add photos from the .Mac account.

I discovered this quit by accident when someone I know sent email from a .Mac email account.

For the rest of us, it really is an unused feature.

-fred