Tsunami "wave rat" had best intentions

Canadian student Josh Kaplan was called a wave rat for offering the domain name tsunamirelief.com for $50 000 on auction site eBay, but his mother said he was only trying to raise money for relief efforts.

Reuters reports that Michelle Tirado, a US freelance journalist, had initially registered the domain name the morning she heard news of the tsunami disaster.

Tirado listed it for sale with an asking bid of $99, but donated it to Kaplan, who she said claimed to represent an international fund-raising effort.

After finding the sale listing on eBay with a $50 000 starting bid, Tirado thought there was something fishy going on.

"I thought there was a good chance this is fraud," Tirado said.

US online retailers posted holiday sales of $23.2 billion, up 25% from the 2003 season, according to a survey released by Goldman, Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings.

The firms previously forecast year-on-year growth of 20%, reports Reuters.

Consumers spent $3.76 billion in the apparel and clothing category, which contributed the largest share of online dollars at 16%.

Toys and video games grabbed 11% of total spending with $2.53 billion. Consumer electronics came in third at 10% with $2.31 billion.

EBay and Amazon.com were again the dominant Web retailers.

FIC will unveil the Linux-based Vassili portable media player at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week, reports Ziff Davis.

It includes a 3.6-inch colour liquid crystal display screen and a 20GB hard drive.

The Vassili can play multimedia content downloaded directly from PCs and personal video recorders in a number of formats.

Other features include TV- and audio-out ports, a built-in speaker, a USB 2.0 device interface, a USB host interface and a 10/100 Ethernet LAN port.