ICC Awards 2012

Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara  - "Test Player of the Year Award”, “Player of the Year Award” and “People’s Choice Award”.

India's Virat Kohli  - The ODI cricketer of the year.

West Indies bowler Sunil Narine - Emerging Cricketer of the Year 2012.

George Dockrell of Ireland - ICC Associate and Affiliate Cricketer of the Year.

South Africa batsman Richard Levi - ICC Twenty20 International Performance of the Year 

Sri Lanka's Kumar Dharmasena - ICC Umpire of the Year.

New Zealand's Daniel Vettori - ICC Spirit of Cricket Award 2012.

iPhone 5 preview

At long last, the Apple iPhone 5 is here. We got our hands on the new phone at Apple's September 12 launch event in San Francisco.

Apple’s next iPhone is official, and despite being the sixth iPhone model (technically), we know it’s officially the iPhone 5.

Over the last year, we've heard a ton of rumors about what it might deliver with LTE, a taller display, and a redesigned connector being the most likely tidbits. Fortunately, we now can put all that speculation to rest as Apple spilled the secrets.

As expected, the new iPhone is 18 percent thinner (0.30 inch vs. 0.37 inch thick) than the iPhone 4S. Apple says it's the thinnest handset around, but that's a race that changes often. That means it's also 20 percent lighter for a total of 3.95 ounces. The Retina Display expands from 3.5 inches (its size since the original iPhone) to 4 inches. The total resolution remains the same, though, at 326 pixels per inch. The total pixel count is 1,136x640, and we now have a 16:9 aspect ratio.

GoDaddy apologizes for outage with 30% discounts

GoDaddy announced Thursday 30 percent across-the-board discounts to its customers as an apology for an outage that knocked out the company's services for several hours this week.

"We owe you a big apology for the intermittent service outages we experienced on September 10 that may have impacted your website, your e-mail and other Go Daddy services," GoDaddy CEO Scott Wagner writes in an e-mail to the company's customers.

"We let you down and we know it," he adds. "We take our responsibilities—and the trust you place in us—very seriously. I cannot express how sorry I am to those of you who were inconvenienced." Wagner maintains that throughout its history GoDaddy's DNS infrastructure has provided 99.999 percent uptime: "This is the level of performance we expect from ourselves."

The 30 percent discounts will be available for the next seven days by using the code Apology4a at checkout. With the discount, registering a .com domain for a year costs about $9.10. That compares favorably with other registrars who charge around $13 a year for a .com domain. In the past, however, GoDaddy has offered limited-time one-year deals on .com domains for as little at $7.99 a year.

MTNL launches three Android tablets

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), in partnership with device manufacturer Teracom, has announced its entry in to the Indian tablet market with the launch of three new Android tablets under the name "Lofty".

The tablets - namely Lofty TZ300, Lofty TZ200 and the Lofty TZ100 - are priced at Rs 3,999, Rs 6,499 and Rs 10,999 respectively. MTNL is offering these tabs with free complementary data bundle of 10 GB of 3G data valid for two months, both local as well as roaming.

Lofty TZ300

This tablet is a low cost entry level Android 4.0 (Ice-Cream Sandwich) based tablet featuring a 1.2 GHz Arm cortex A9 architecture based processor with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage. It has a 0.3 megapixel front facing camera for video calling too.

The tablet features a 7 inch display with an 800 480 pixel resolution with a resistive touch to keep the price on the lower side. While it gets data support through USB data dongles.

Lofty TZ200

The Lofty TZ200 is a mid range Android 4.0 (Ice-Cream Sandwich) based tablet featuring a 1.2 GHz Arm cortex A9 architecture based processor with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage. The TZ200 features a capacitive touch based input system with support for multi touch.

It does not have any rear camera but comes with a front 0.3 megapixel camera for video calling. For 3G connectivity, there is a USB port.

Lofty TZ100

The Lofty TZ100 is also based on Android 4.0 (Ice-Cream Sandwich) but is powered with a 1 GHz Cortex A9 architecture based processor. The TZ100 also has 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage. It has a 7 inch display with a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution display.

Along with that the TZ 100 comes a 3 megapixel rear camera along with a 0.3 megapixel front camera for video calling. That’s not all as the TZ 100 also comes with calling functionality with support for a 3G SIM for both voice as well as data functions.

All tablets support 32 GB of additional memory with the onboard SD card slot for expansion. Data dongles for the TZ 200 and TZ300 will have to be bought separately by the users to access data.

All tablets are manufactured by an Indian device manufacturer Teracom, which has its manufacturing unit in Goa and is already supplying 3G Data cards to both MTNL and BSNL. Users can book their tablets through MTNL Sanchar Haats as well as on the Teracom online store (terracomstore.in).

Akshay Kumar's Joker gets negative reviews from film critics

Director Shirish Kunder's latest Hindi movie Joker starring Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi Sinha in leads, is a mass entertainer movie and it has bagged all negative reviews from film critics. Akki's rocking performance, music and cinematography are its major highlights; and predictable, illogical story and dragging narration are its drawbacks. The fantasy adventure flick has been rated an average 1.5 out of 5. Continue to read film critics' verdict.

Koimoi - Roshni Devi's Rating: 2

What's Good: The direction; the music; the cinematography; some puns. What's Bad: The predictable storyline. Watch or Not?: It's a timepass watch but not really engrossing.

Rediff - Raja Sen's Rating: 1.5

There isn't a single line in Shirish Kunder's Joker that actually works, leaving us with a film that, while commendably brisk in a 100-minute package, refuses to get going at all.

NDTV - Saibal Chatterjee's Rating: 1

Akshay Kumar is as good as he can be - and that isn't all that good. Sonakshi sleepwalks through the film, grinning and frowning as he drowns in the morass. Give Joker a miss if you value your sanity and money. It gives commercial Hindi cinema a bad name.

Bollywood Hungama - Taran Adarsh's Rating: 1

JOKER is a joke of a film. Disaster!

Andy Roddick announces retirement from top-level tennis after US Open

The 30-year-old American defeated Australian teen Bernard Tomic 6-3, 6-4, 6-0 in only 87 minutes before a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd of 24,674 just a day after announcing that the US Open would be his final career tournament.

"I had no idea what was going to happen out there," Roddick said. "That was a different kind of nerves than I've had before. That was surprising for me.

"It was great. I took a look around and I didn't even feel bad about it. Literally I took a look around. I had a good time. When they were dancing and stuff on the switch-overs I was just watching. That was a lot of fun."

"When it's what you're going to do the next week and a month from now, you are so consumed by what's going on in the next five minutes that you don't really notice stuff," Roddick said.