Sophos has announced the launch of a new version of its MailMonitor for Exchange product to scan Microsoft Exchange 2003 servers for email-aware worms, viruses, and Trojan horses. MailMonitor scans for viruses in all incoming emails, enabling network administrators to either disinfect, delete or quarantine infected messages.

The Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Consumers League and Earthlink held a press conference Monday in Washington, D.C., to raise the public’s awareness of scams that try to get you to give out your bank and credit card information. Bankrate.com talks about the most common ones, including one where con artists were attempting to trick EBay, PayPal, AOL, BestBuy.com and Discover Card users into revealing their Social Security number, bank account and credit card information.

Microsoft plans to release Office 2003 and PC World has this sneak peek. According to the article, Microsoft isn’t aiming this upgrade at folks who are currently using Office XP, but rather at the IT managers and system administrators who spend their days trying to figure out how to make things work together.

Stephen L. Davis, CEO and principal of Seattle-based MTG Management Consultants, has as many as 25 consultants spending their days in planes en route to clients, Davis needed an easy way to keep everyone connected. As this article in Business Week reports, Davis found his solution in Groove Networks’ Groove software, which offers small businesses an inexpensive way to collaborate effectively without investing in an IT department or even setting up a server.

It’s been an interesting maintenance day here at ZATZ. After the Verizon folks left, we found that we were unable to correctly access the online store. At first, we were convinced mySQL didn’t like us (since that’s the error we got). However, once logging onto the server machine, we tried to ping outside sites like Google, and then our own internal router, and consistently got this message: "PING: transmit failed, error code 65." After visiting Microsoft’s knowledgebase, we were even more confused. According to Microsoft, the error occurs if ZoneAlarm is running and blocking a port. OK, that makes sense — except we weren’t running ZoneAlarm. Uh, except we were. Apparently, we must have left it running back during our intrusion fighting days a month or so ago, and something between Verizon’s visit and the network maintenance set it off. That something was a reboot (which we haven’t done in a month or so). Moral of the story: if Microsoft’s knowledgebase suggests something, no matter how unprobably, at least spend a moment or two to check it out.

We want to congratulate the folks at Deerfield for scoring a major coup: Oddpost. We’ve been following Oddpost on and off for some time now. Oddpost is a really, really nicely done email interface that runs in a Web browser. Last we heard, it was being provided by the Oddpost guys themselves. However, Deerfield today announced that they’re publishing it under the slightly more wordy name of "VisNetic Oddpost". In any case, this should be one heck of a product and kudos to the Deerfielders for getting it into their product line!

Microsoft recently announced two new exams for its 2003 Microsoft Certified System Administrator (MCSA) and Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) credentials. According to CertCities, the first, 70-284, Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, appeared on the list of electives for both titles last week. The second, Exam 70-299: Implementing and Administering Security in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Network, was added earlier this week.

We’ll be down from about 3am to around 6am EST so Verizon can do a line test. We had some very serious weather here, and Verizon’s asked us (and apparently others) to allow a short shutdown so they can do integrity tests. Hey, any time we can encourage integrity of any kind from a phone company, we’re going to encourage it!

We’re back online. Kudos to the Verizon tech who actually showed up when promised. Apparently a twisted pair running underground got shorted due to the heavy storms. It’s fixed and we be jammin’.

Looking for a mobile email client? Entrepreneur takes a look at five products that combine cell phone service, wireless email, instant messaging and Web access. The products are Danger Hiptop, Handspring Treo 300, Palm Tungsten W, Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry 5810 and the T-Mobile PocketPC.