World Cup Spain "Championship Winners"

Spain became the eighth country to win the World Cup, beating the Netherlands by 1-0 before 85,000 fans at Soccer City in Johannesburg and millions of television viewers around the world.

Iniesta’s goal, the latest ever scored to win a World Cup final match, broke up a rugged, foul-filled game that was headed to a dreaded penalty-kick contest. Among the multitude of yellow cards — 14 of them, 9 to the Netherlands — handed out by referee Howard Webb, both teams were saved by their fine goalkeeping. Spain keeper Iker Casillas stopped two breakaways from Arjen Robben, including one in extra time, and Netherlands keeper Maarten Stekelenburg stopped a breakaway by Cesc Fabregas and, early in the match, dove to turn aside a header from Sergio Ramos.

Spain’s victory, in their first World Cup final, made them only the third team ever to reign simultaneously as European champions and world champions. The Netherlands lost the final for the third time, after falling to the host country in the finals at West Germany 1974 and Argentina 1978.

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NBA Free Agent

Rockets make pitch to free agent Bosh

Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey sure knows how to make a first impression. Morey met with coveted free agent Chris Bosh just after midnight Thursday, making a pitch to an available player at the exact moment free agency opened for the second straight year.

The Rockets are considered long shots to land the 6-foot-10 Bosh, who has averaged a double-double in three of his seven seasons with Toronto. But Morey wanted to meet with Bosh anyway, envisioning a perfect complement to All-Star center Yao Ming, who said this week he'll pick up the player option on his contract and return to the Rockets next season.

Morey used his Twitter feed to announce he had met with Bosh in the opening hours of free agency. Morey did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

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Switzerland beat Spain

Spectacular, the Swiss won 1-0 through a kick from spain Gelson Fernandes. It also provided a thrill at a tournament that has seen few surprises and just 25 goals after the first game for all 32 teams.

"To be fair, I'm not used to scoring goals, so I was a bit surprised," said Fernandes, who got just his second in international play. "It was a bit of luck."

Eren Derdiyok created Switzerland's big chance in the 52d minute by surging through the center of Spain's defense and rounding goalie Iker Casillas. Gerard Pique's desperate tackle stopped Derdiyok, but Fernandes pounced on the loose ball and forced it into the net.
Spain badly outshot the Swiss and held the ball 63 percent of the time, but could find no way through Switzerland's determined defense.

"Today wasn't our day," Spain coach Vicente del Bosque said. "We have two games ahead of us. We have to find a way to win them."

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Franz Beckenbauer's England criticize Matthew Upson

Upson was not keen to become embroiled in a war of words with Beckenbauer, who led his team to World Cup glory as a player in 1974 and a coach in 1990.

But he does not feel there is any reason for England to be deflected from their chosen path.

''We will play the football that suits us best,'' said Upson, who was speaking on a visit to an SOS Village in Rustenburg to spend time with local children, many of whom have been orphaned.

''We want to win matches, so we will play the style according to that.

''Whatever he thinks about our style of play is his opinion. If we are accused of kick and rush but win something, I don't think many people would complain.''

Upson did admit England had been working hard on the training ground attempting to iron out the problems that surfaced at the weekend.

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World Cup Recipe Apps for Good

Over the last couple of weeks I've used Twitter to ask for user recommendations on Hungarian, Recipe, and World Cup apps. It seemed unfair to keep the results to myself.

I also recently had the pleasure of working with a Apps for Good, a program from CDI Europe that teaches young people how to create apps that change the world - a philosophy I could not possibly agree with more. The class I was involved with recently graduated, and published 3 new apps to the Android Market in the process.

So, for your enjoyment (and with limited commentary) here are some of the apps I've been checking out recently.

Apps for Good

• Stop and Search: Really useful reference app that walks you through your rights and obligations when you're stopped by the police in the UK. Bonus points for providing a mechanism for rating and mapping the experience, as well as viewing a map of other reported stops.
• StudioPhly: For aspiring musicians, this app will let you find a local recording studio with the gear you need.
• StudentVoice: Lets prospective students find out more about the prospective Universities.

Some Hungarian Apps

• Ball Madness (by A-Droid): A satisfyingly difficult bouncing ball puzzle game. Recommended despite my difficulty in getting past level 3 :(
• VibraSeq (by A-Droid): Love this. A sequencer to create complex device vibration patterns. But wait! You can export the recorded vibration patters for use in 3rd party apps that support them.
• Names (by Elek, Márton): Simple widget that tells you what Hungarian name day it is. Bonus points for searching your contacts and triggering notifications to remind you of anyone's name day.
• GPS Status (by EclipSim): There's a few apps out there that will show you the position, strength, and details from the GPS - but from what I've seen this is the best of them. Nice UI, lots of information, perfect for the data obsessives amongst us.

Recipe Apps

• Cooking Capsules (by Smart Capsules): Recipes + shopping list + video of the recipe being made. An ADC1 winner, it's an oldie but a very goodie.
• Epicurious (by Condé Nast Digital): This seemed a popular choice, and with 28,000 recipes I can see why.

World Cup Apps

• Goal.com Mobile (by Handmark): Live scores, breaking news, good stuff.
• World Cup News Pro (by Mippin): All the World Cup news for all the teams you follow, presented in Mippin's familiar flip-card UI.
• Sun Football (by News International): Live scores, highlight videos, and world cup news from The Sun newspaper.
 source : http://blog.radioactiveyak.com

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Germany VS Australia Scores Updates

Watch Live Germany VS Australia Scores Updates – FIFA World Cup 2010 Live Streaming & TV Telecast Channel – Watch game 3 of Fifa World Cup 2010 which is scheduled between teams of Grpup D. In this exciting match Germany and Australia will be facing each other at 18:30 GMT or 2:30 pm ET at Durban Stadium. Michael Ballack is not playing from Germany so hope Germany will make good of this loss by putting more efforts. To cope the loss of Ballack veteran superstar International rookieMesut Ozil will be replacing him and hope he will compensate the loss by adopting the world’s football pace immediately.

Watch the live TV coverage through ESPN, Univision, ABC. You can also watch the Live Stream through ESPN3.com, Foxsports.com, ESPN and FIFA.com for live scores update. To See more live TV coverage based from your country, just visit Livesoccertv.com.

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NCAA Sanctions

The NCAA threw the book at storied USC, imposing a two-year bowl ban, four years' probation and signficant scholarship losses that likely will damage the program's foundations. "So higher-profile players require higher-profile monitoring."

With pointed language, the NCAA said in its report that USC's oversight of its top athletes ran contrary to the fundamental principles of amateur sports. The coaches who presided over the alleged misdeeds — football's Pete Carroll and basketball's Tim Floyd — left USC in the past year.

USC reacted with uniform outrage to the harshness of the sanctions, promising an appeal. USC beat Oklahoma in the BCS title game on Jan. 4, 2005, and won 12 games during Bush's Heisman-winning 2005 season, which ended with a loss to Texas in the 2006 BCS title game.

While no action would go into effect until USC's appeals are heard by the NCAA, Hancock said there would be no 2004 champion if USC's victory is vacated.
The NCAA says Bush received lavish gifts from two fledgling sports marketers hoping to sign him. Members of the Heisman Trust have said they might review Bush's award if he were ruled ineligible by the NCAA.

USC, which plans to appeal some of the football-related penalties, released details later Thursday of its defense arguments. The NCAA cited a 2 1/2-minute phone call in January 2006 between fledgling marketer Lloyd Lake, who allegedly provided many of Bush's illegal benefits and USC assistant coach Todd McNair, who said he couldn't remember the call. The NCAA took no further action against the men's basketball team, which had already banned itself from postseason play last spring and vacated its wins from Mayo's season. We're still going to play an extremely high level of football. USC is the first Football Bowl Subdivision school to be banned from postseason play since Alabama served a two-year ban ending in 2003. The NCAA condemned McNair's professed ignorance of Bush's dealings with sports marketers Lake and Michael Michaels.

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Holloway urges transfer caution

Blackpool boss Ian Holloway has warned other clubs and agents that the newly-promoted Seasiders will not be held to ransom over potential signings. Chairman Karl Oyston has a strict transfer policy in place - a stance that Holloway agrees with.

"I don't want Karl to change how he does deals because I agree with him," Holloway told BBC Radio Lancashire.

"Anybody who has ever tried to knock any sort of deal out of him, where do they get? Not very blooming far."

Oyston has built up a tough reputation within football circles of a no-nonsense approach when he is bringing in players to the club.

Blackpool broke their transfer record in August 2009 when they signed Charlie Adam from Rangers for £500,000.

But, despite receiving £90m for winning promotion to English football's top flight for the first time since 1971, Holloway is keen for the Seasiders to avoid being dragged into inflated deals.

And, in terms of having the strength of character not to automatically swim with the tide, he even likens his chairman to that stubborn old Blackadder character, Captain Redbeard Rum.

If these people think they can put an extra nought on with Karl Oyston they can think again

Blackpool manager Ian Holloway

'We won't be held to ransom this summer," said Holloway, "because we have a chairman who could be straight from Blackadder, one of my favourite ever television programmes.

"He was going to sail around the world and he found a captain with a ginger beard and no legs, who said 'All the other captains think you need a crew, I think you don't'.

"It's like that with Karl. I can hear him saying 'all the other chairmen realise they have to do this, but I say you don't and I'm not going to do it'.

"And what happened to the bloke with the ginger beard was that Nursie ended up wearing his beard because he was eaten by cannibals.

"I just hope my chairman doesn't get eaten by agents and all these people at other clubs.

"But do I think he will? Absolutely no chance. God help them trying to deal with him, I'm finding it hard enough myself.

Holloway believes other clubs perceive Blackpool as an easy target after their Championship play-off final victory in May.

"It's a huge problem because people think we have a huge pot of gold. But I can tell you they won't get any of that," said the 47-year-old Bristol-born manager.

"I've got to be really clever and ask lots of questions and get so much information to give to my chairman, who will be the one trying to do these deals. We've never been in this position and we don't know what's going to happen.

"But, if these people think they can put an extra nought on with Karl Oyston they can think again. And I wouldn't want Karl any other way.

"He'll quite rightly continue to do things as he has been and there's no doubt he will be a breath of fresh air in every Premier League meeting because he will not change - and that's the refreshing thing about it all."

Source: BBC Sport

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NBA Finals: Lakers Excellence

Boston, Jun 9: Clinching 91-84 win over the Boston Celtics in Game 3, the LA Lakers took a lead of 2-1 in the best-of-seven-series of the NBA finals.

While Kobe Brynt's elated energy caught on like a virus to the rest of the team. His brilliance helped the Lakers stay ahead in the first three quarters while in the fourth and final one veteran Derek Fisher jumped in with a whooping contribution of 11 points.

The return of Kevin Garnett bolstered the Celtics fight. The 34-year-old player may have scored just six points in Game 2 but in the third game, he scored the first six points and remained a force to reckon with through out the finals battle. The finals series will continue on Thursday, Jun 10 with Game 4 in the TD (Boston) Garden.

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