There are no shortages of pronouncements of a full economic recovery from the post-boom recession years. Tech job cuts are at a six-year low, IT operational budgets are at the highest levels since 1997, and tech wages are at a five-year high, and this is just a gathering from reports issued this week. Yet, IT still struggles to disengage from the forlorn image of thousands of layoff victims after the tech bubble’s collapse in 2001. A report issued this week highlighted some outmoded views of the field, as well as the schism that still exists between insiders’ and outsiders’ perception of the occupation.

A new study confirms that users of the popular eBay auction site and the online payment company PayPal remain the most popular targets of phishing schemes. More than three quarters of all phishing e-mails are targeted to the users of eBay and its PayPal subsidiary, according to the report.

Synaptris announced the release of version 3.5 of IntelliPRINT Analytics (formerly known as IntelliVIEW for Notes), an interactive report writing and analytics solution for Lotus Notes and Domino. IntelliPRINT enables ad hoc business reporting with options to query, filter, group, compute and format real-time data without the need to write any code at all.

We continue our series of interviews with Lotus Business Partners. The DominoPower Interview series has become very popular, in part because it really gives Lotus professionals out there a deep and personal insight into many of the companies (and, more important, the people) that make up the Lotus professional community. Over the past year, we’ve gotten to know the team at Teamstudio and this week, we’re able to learn more about what’s going on with the company and some of the changes that have taken place recently.

Read this DominoPower article.

Remote Backup Systems, developer and distributor of RBackup online backup software, announced the release of the top threats to computer users. The list, compiled from dozens of industry sources, underscores the critical nature of automated, secure, remote data backup as the major component in both disaster preparation and business continuity planning.

Mozilla released an update to its popular Firefox Web browser that fixes a dozen vulnerabilities, seven of which it deems "critical." The most serious of the flaws could be exploited by cyberattackers to commandeer a vulnerable PC, according to Mozilla. The company, which oversees Firefox development, has published security advisories for each of the flaws repaired by the Firefox update.

Former political blogger Ana Marie Cox, better known as Wonkette, will rejoin the so-called mainstream media as the new Washington editor for Time magazine’s Time.com Web site later this month. Cox, 33, will coordinate Time.com’s political coverage and write features and essays for print and Web versions of the magazine owned by the world’s largest media conglomerate, Time Warner.

Lenovo Group will become the first top-tier manufacturer to offer an AMD processor-based desktop to large businesses in the United States, sources familiar with the company’s plans said. Lenovo has deliberately aimed the ThinkCentre A60 desktop at large businesses in the United States. Other top-tier manufacturers offer AMD processor PCs, but have yet to openly target larger businesses with AMD-processor PCs in the United States.

Intel introduced its most important product line in six years, unveiling 10 microprocessors that are expected to help the world’s largest chip maker retake ground lost to smaller competitor Advanced Micro Devices. The Core 2 Duo microprocessors, which are being rolled out gradually over the next month, are Intel’s first desktop and mobile chips to feature a blueprint designed to deliver significantly better performance while requiring less power and kicking off less heat.

The Learning Continuum Company has announced Notes Domino 7 System Administration 1, a new distance learning course to train Domino 7 System Administrators. This course teaches how to administer Domino 7 by installing and configuring a small Domino network from the ground up. Students get a solid grounding in how Domino security works, from user IDs to server access to database ACLs. They learn to configure mail routing between Domino servers and the Internet. The course also covers how to configure replication and how to control what replicates. Students also learn to securely enable a Domino server to act as a Web server. There are many included demonstrations and activities done using the Domino Administrator and a Domino server to allow the student hands-on experience with Domino administration. This course, along with TLCC’s Notes Domino 7 System Administration 2 course, will prepare a student for all three exams required to become an IBM Certified System Administrator in Notes Domino 7.