Apple began offering more transparency for MobileMe after launching a status blog for its online service on Friday. The MobileMe Status blog opened with an entry discussing a topic many users have been interested in: the extended email outage some subscribers have been suffering through.

"Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what's happening with MobileMe, and I'm working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date," the blog states. "In the 14 days since we launched, it's been a rocky road and we know the pain some people have been suffering."

With only two entries so far, blogger David G. stated that Apple enabled Webmail access on Sunday for the one percent of users that have been without email service for over a week. Some messages received between July 18 and July 22, however, may have been lost.

While the MobileMe Status blog won't be much of a consolation for the subscribers that lost email and have gone without email service for days on end, it marks a change in Apple's typical information lock-down policy. If Apple continues openly talking about MobileMe issues and updates, it could help the company avoid some of the frustrations subscribers experience from simple not knowing what's going on with the service.

Since the order to start the MobileMe Status blog appears to have come from Steve Jobs, odds are it will stick around for some time to come.