MIDDAY MARKETS: Techs rebound

A morning packed with deals, and the anticipation of Oracle earnings and some strong IPOs on deck, helped revive the Nasdaq at midday Tuesday. The Nasdaq gained 41.95 to 4,949.28, and the Dow Jones industrial average climbed 27.30 to 9,974.43

The Inter@ctive Week @Net Index gained 5 to 598.68.

On the economic front, U.S. retailer sales rose 1.1 percent in February, the Commerce Department reported.

RADVision (Nasdaq: RVSN) popped up 40 to 60 in debut, after it priced shares at $20.

Digitas (Nasdaq: DTAS), an Internet consulting firm, said 9.3 million shares have priced at $24 each, but the offering had yet to trade.

Consumer auction site network FairMarket (Nasdaq: FAIM) priced 5 million shares at $17 each, but had yet to debut.

Internet software maker Inktomi (Nasdaq: INKT), up 25 5/8 to 214 5/8, announced six new wireless deals. New partners Portal Software Inc. (Nasdaq: PRSF), up 3 7/16 to 79 1/8, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HWP), up 1 11/16 to 148 3/16, Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), up 3 1/8 to 94, and Spyglass Inc. (Nasdaq: SPYG), up 9 1/16 to 87 1/2, were also rising after announcement of the deal.

Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT) up 4 1/4 to 125 15/16, said it would buy Xros (pronounced KY-ROS), a photonic switching company, for $3.25 billion.

Sandisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) rose 20 15/16 to 145 15/16, or 16 percent, after the maker of flash memory data storage products got an upgrade from Merrill Lynch.

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), slated to report after the bell, was up 3 5/8 to 82 3/8. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) rose 3/4 to 98 3/4. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) rose 2 ? to 124 7/8.

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 7/16 to 65 3/4, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) gained 6 15/16 to 182 3/4 and America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL), which announced an alliance with Sears (NYSE: S) hopped 2 5/8 to 63 15/16.