While there's no excusing England's frankly shocking performance and exit out of the World Cup finals yesterday, there's also no denying that Frank Lampard had quite a scorching goal brutally and mistakenly disallowed. It could well have turned the tide of the match, but alas, it was not to be.

Still, even if the ref needs a new pair of specs (or at least the help of goal-line technology), at least electrical retailers Currys are giving England fans something to smile about; they WILL recognise Frank Lampards goal, meaning they'll be giving a further £10 voucher (£10 for each of the 3 goals - plus an extra £10 voucher for the one that got away) to customers who bought a TV over and above £599 and who signed up for the promotion initially as part of their "Cash for Goals" World Cup deal.

Currys Marketing Director, Niall O'Keeffe commented: "Like every other England fan, and pretty much every person around the world who watched the match, we believe that Frank Lampard scored a legitimate goal on Sunday. We promised our customers £10 back for every goal the team scored in the World Cup and we stand by that so we're officially recognising it and will be giving all eligible customers a free £10 gift voucher for the goal that got away."

He added: "England may have got the red card - but our customers will get a gift card. Although it's no consolation for an early World Cup exit we'd like to give a bit back to the fans who've had so little to cheer about over the last couple of weeks."

Every cloud has a silver lining and all that other stiff upper lip malarkey I suppose.

Note: The £10 vouchers deal is only for customers who have already signed up for the Cash For Goals promotion.

  If you headed over to Germany, but weren't lucky enough to get tickets for the match, there's a good chance you saw it on one of the huge Philips Amblilight screens, located in all 12 of the host cities.

According to figures released by the company, 18 million people saw the games on giant Philips screens - believed to be a world sports record and a figure equal to one fifth of the entire German population and over five times the total number of stadium attendees for the entire tournament.

Technology made the World Cup was the first major sports tournament we didn't need to dash home for. From mobile TV to the BBC's broadband coverage - we had the means to keep up-to-date with the matches wherever we were.

But did the technology live up to the hype? According to a report at The Register, "self-appointed mobile TV referee David Frodsham" of Argogroup wasn't convinced. He used his Monitor Master system to compare clips from T-Mobile, 3 and the BBC over ADSL, scoring the quality of images received.

Who came out on top? Read the full story over on The Register.

Ever heard of mobizines? They're mobile magazines - just like the magazines you buy from the shops, but custom-built to fit your mobile screen. You download each issue just once, but can read it as much as you like. Ideal if you're on a train or on your lunch hour and looking for something to keep you amused.

And as it's World Cup time, what could be better that taking a look through the latest Who ate all the Bratwurst mobizine. From the makers of the top footie blog, the mobizine also takes an alternative look at life in Germany - but with just one quick download to your phone, you can take with you everywhere, to enjoy anytime you need to raise a smile.

Find out more about the Who Ate All The Bratwurst mobizine

If you're looking for information on the World Cup, it's perhaps best to stick to sites you know and trust, after research by security firm McAfee found many were infested with spyware and adware.

To gather their statistics McAfee researchers looked at websites hosting screensavers related to the 32 teams competing in the World Cup, then cross-referenced them with McAfee's SiteAdvisor software tool, which records how safe a website is. Angola was found to be the team with the largest number of risky sites associated with it (24 per cent), followed by Brazil and Portugal.

I did rather well picking the results of the last World Cup (helped by a large bet on Senegal beating France), but this year, things aren't going so well. Still, I was quietly confident on Argentina coming through for me as winners this year until I visited Who Ate All The Bratwurst.

They've discovered a computer program, put together by students at Sharjah's American University, which predicts the results of matches with an 83 per cent success rate. So working through it should give you an idea who will win this year's tournament.

And the winner is....well, you'll have to go over to Who Ate All The Bratwurst to find that out. But here's a clue - football isn't likely to be coming home.

Good news for those of us potentially office-bound during the World Cup - Yahoo! and FIFA have announced that fans will have access to video highlights of games on FIFAworldcup.com - the first time World Cup highlights have officially been available for free on the web.

The site will feature World Cup action, including all the goals from the 64 tournament matches for free (no registration required), two minutes of professionally-produced video highlights available within the hour following the final whistle of each game (except Asia and Middle East, where a 24-hour delay is in place and in Germany, where a 48-hour delay is in place) plus on-demand, searchable highlights, so you can locate your favourite moments, such as goals scored by your team of choice. 

Apparently some sort of football tournament is about to happen and I'm not sure why decidedly non-sporty Propellerhead has been alerted to this new website, but just in case you've arrived here from our sister Word Cup site, or you fancy a game of footy, without having to get wet, muddy, understand the offside rule or get up off your bum then have a look at BinballWizard. It comes to your courtesy of Reed Personnel Services -- hence the office connection -- and the idea is to hike a football into a wastebasket. You are playing against the clock and there are prizes up for grabs for high-scorers

I've seen some strange World Cup gadgets recently, but this one really takes the biscuit - or should that be sausage? It's a Peperami Fanimal - ranting, sausage-shaped match-time buddy, which can express your pain through the most agonising World Cup moments.

The Fanimal is 30cm tall, with a built-in sound chip. When the pressure becomes too much, just chuck your Fanimal against something hard to hear it scream a rather sharp-tongued football rant, including "Who's the sausage in the black", "Whose flaming side are you on?" and "The referee's a veggie!"

Here's an interesting one. HDTVUK reports that a feature on the Beeb's website says that that 'The BBC is among European broadcasters due to broadcast matches in HD standard for those with the suitable equipment to receive it.'

It is tucked away in a story on how top trade journal Screen Digest reckons that there could well be a shortage of  HDTV decoder chips for tellies.

Full story here.