A significant portion of people who use the Hotmail e-mail system and other Internet-based products were having trouble accessing the services on Friday. The company said it was an internal problem rather than an attack on its system.

The latest set of updates for Office XP is causing problems with two junk mail filtering products. Users of Sunbelt Software’s iHateSpam and Cloudmark’s SpamNet are encountering security warnings with each email message they receive.

Exchange Server 5.5 and 2000’s Outlook Web Access (OWA) allows clients to read Exchange-based e-mail through a web browser, but by default does not allow users to change domain passwords in IIS 5.0. Serdar Yegulalp of SearchExchange.com tells us how you can enable password-changing through OWA.

Return Path, a company that monitors email performance for online marketers, has found that nearly 19 percent of email sent by its customers never reached the inboxes of intended recipients.

Chapter 2 of Steve Bryant’s e-book, Experts Guide for Exchange 2003 is now available. Free registration is required in order to download the chapters.

This download provides new versions of four scripting files that were included with Live Communications Server 2003. You should download and use these updated scripting files if you plan to migrate from Microsoft Exchange 2000 Instant Messaging to Live Communications Server 2003.

GFI has released an update to its email exploit engine today which can detect any viruses that exploit the newly discovered high risk Outlook 2002 vulnerability.

ABF Outlook Express Backup is a backup utility for MS Outlook Express from ABF software. The program can back up and restore messages, address book, settings and preferences, mail and news accounts, message rules, blocked senders lists, signatures, and even Internet Explorer favorites.

Businesses that want their Office applications to be more than a one-trick pony are going to like Office 2003, experts say.

Enterprises are using Linux more often as a platform on which to prop up their messaging solutions. The biggest casualty in this trend is Microsoft Exchange, says a one industry observer.