MIDDAY MARKETS: Earnings revive techs

Techs rallied at midday Wednesday after a couple of positive earnings reports. The Nasdaq rose 30.70 to 3,882.36 and the Dow Jones industrial average fell 40.66 to 11,026.34.

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index rose 3 to 511.33.

Analog Devices (NYSE: ADI) rose 8 5/16 to 91 3/16,, Lycos (Nasdaq: LCOS) was up 3 to 60 15/16 , and BEA (Nasdaq: BEAS) rose 6 7/8 to 55 3/4 after reporting better-than-expected quarterly results.

PeoplePC (Nasdaq: PEOP) finally priced 8.5 million shares at $10 each. The initial public offering was delayed several weeks, and its terms changed twice. In other IPOs Wednesday, o2 Wireless Solutions (Nasdaq: OTWO) rose 1 to 13 after pricing its 6.1 million shares at the bottom of it its $12 to $14 range.

Living.com has joined the ranks of the dot-com dead, the company backed by Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), up 1 3/16 to 38 3/4, announced Tuesday night.

Kana Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: KANA), up 4 7/16 to 36 15/16 flew up 14 percent Wednesday after it announced a deal with IBM (NYSE: IBM), down 11/16 to 121 5/16, to integrate its relationship management software with IBM's e-business capabilities.

Shares of Juno Online Services Inc. (Nasdaq: JWEB) rose 11/16 to 5 5/8 after the company announced a bundling deal with IBM.

Chordiant Software (Nasdaq: CHRD) rose 3 15/32 to 12 3/4, or 37 percent after it announced a $24 million investment in its electronic customer relationship management technology.

Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO)rose 2 15/16 to 135 1/4 and AOL (NYSE: AOL) gained 3/4 to 55 1/4.

Among other leading tech issues: Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 1/2 to 68 3/8,, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was even at 71 5/8, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) rose 1/4 to 63 7/16 and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) rose 5/16 to 81 9/16.