Mutual belligerence over the spy plane in Hainan might have damaged United States/China trade relations, but at least one Internet firm has managed to use the quarrel to increase its exports to China. Eruptor Entertainment, the Palm OS developer that makes the pocket Pamela Anderson, claims downloads of its PortaBush Palm president have been a huge success since the argument began. Eruptor president Brad Foxhoven told Associated Press that Chinese users had been downloading 1,600 copies of the program an hour, or up to 80 per cent of all downloads. You can download PortaBush from www.eruptor.com , and make him drink, dance, pick his nose and blow stuff up. You probably thought Airmiles were the peak of travel industry hospitality. But no. Online travel site Asiatravelmart.com has come up with an even better incentive to spend more time travelling. The TravelDollar. With an exchange rate of one ATM TravelDollar to the greenback, TravelDollars are already worth more than our own local currency. They can only be used in exchange for Asiatravelmart holidays, but that's all right - the Backspace travel budget stretches only to the occasional taxi. To get your currency, all you need to do is let Asiatravelmart.com spam your friends. 'It's really easy to earn your Free ATM TravelDollars! You just need to key in the names and e-mail addresses of your friends and then invite them to become a member at Asiatravelmart.com. We'll help you send the e-mail to your friends,' promises the site. 'Accumulate enough ATM TravelDollars and soon you'll be on your way to your DREAM vacation . . . ATM TravelDollars will never expire. So, it's only a matter of time before your friends are sponsoring your vacation . . . forever! Isn't that great?' Wonderful. All we need for that European summer break is to enlist the help of just 16,000 of our closest pals. As the global technophobia epidemic spreads like foot-and-mouth in a Chinese takeaway, not only the dotcoms are hurting. According to rumours, server vendors such as Sun and Silicon Graphics are facing a hit from the flood of second-hand equipment on the market. But not everybody is selling off their servers to pay the rent. At home.planet. nl/=mourits/koelkast, Dutch Internet worker Matthijs Mourits has launched the Silicon Graphics Refrigerator Project, where you can learn how to turn your US$175,000 SGI Challenge DM server into a fridge. Now that really is a cool idea.Backspace received a generous invitation last week from something describing itself as the International Executive Guild. The spam was flogging a dubious directory on CD-Rom. 'As a highly respected professional in your field of expertise, we believe your contributions merit very serious consideration for inclusion,' lied the junk mail. Or could it just be that we had the misfortune to have once owned an e-mail address at spam-friendly ISP Asia Online? The International Unicode Conference will roll into town this month. An impressive array of international programmers are expected to turn up to discuss the globalisation of software, multilingual databases and product design, bi-directional textflow, dynamic Web personalisation and 'what the hell did they book us in here for?' Although most of the visitors will be from out of town, the organisers have seen fit to hold the conference at the Harbour Plaza Hong Kong. 'Conveniently located in Hunghom district on the Kowloon side overlooking Victoria Harbour and the Hong Kong Island skyline.' Hunghom, convenient? Yeah, right. And home to Hong Kong's famous nightlife, great shopping, fine eateries, scenic tourist spots and an IT powerhouse in its own right. And they expect these people to come back?