The singing Cook won!

Rocker David Cook won the coveted title of “American Idol” on Wednesday, dealing an unexpected but decisive defeat to a silken-voiced teenager, also named David, on the most popular U.S. television show.

Cook, 25, who was tending bar and playing in a band before he auditioned for the singing competition, stood back to applaud rival David Archuleta, 17, and then bent over crying after host Ryan Seacrest said he had won by 12 million votes.

“This is amazing. Thank you,” said the Blue Springs, Missouri, native, who in addition to being crowned this year’s “Idol” will receive a recording contract.

In its seventh season, “American Idol” has grown from a cheesy summer talent show into a pop culture phenomenon that draws millions of viewers to News Corp’s Fox network at least twice a week.

It has produced mega-stars from both winners and losers, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Chris Daughtry.

This season, however, average audiences on the show have slipped from just over 30 million viewers last year to roughly 28 million this year, the second straight year of declines.

Nevertheless, the dueling Davids garnered a record 97.5 million votes between them, smashing the previous record by 23 million. The contest was decided by a telephone and text-messaging vote in which Cook received 56 percent to Archuleta’s 44 percent.

Throughout this year’s months-long competition, Cook wowed both the show’s viewers and judges with updated, rock versions of pop classics like Lionel Richie’s “Hello” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”

On Tuesday night’s show, however, the judges said the babyfaced Archuleta had outperformed Cook with his pitch-perfect renditions of John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”

Acid-tongued judge Simon Cowell criticized Cook for choosing a song he had never performed before during his last chance to woo voters and called the evening “a knockout” by Archuleta. Cook sang Collective Soul’s “The World I Know” instead of reprising one of his best-loved performances of the season, as Archuleta did with “Imagine.”

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited.

David vs. Goliath err David

It’s David vs David in this years season finale of American Idol. For its first all-male finale since season two, “Idol” pulled out all the stops. The long-simmering epic battle between teen angel David Archuleta and twenty-something rocker David Cook kicked off with the hype of a prize fight, literally. Tuesday night’s performance show opened with a microphone descending from the rafters, as the theme from “Rocky” played and legendary ring announcer Michael Buffer intoned, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nokia Theater L.A. Live and the main event. This is the fight of the century, scheduled for three rounds of competition. So let’s get ready to rummmmble!“

Cook was up first, singing a song hand-picked by music-industry legend Clive Davis, who said he chose U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” because it “captured the yearning of a generation looking for answers, looking for love.” Cook left the guitar behind and gave the iconic anthem a grunge-gospel touch, wandering out into the crowd, working the adoring audience with his best Bono hand-in-the-air moves and ending with an extended male-diva note hold.

Judge Randy Jackson loved the end note, though he said Cook might not have done everything he could have with the song. Paula Abdul said Cook had “arrived.” Simon Cowell said that despite what he perceived as nerves at the top of the song, the singer was “phenomenal.”

Davis’ choice for Archuleta was Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.” Seated on the mid-stage steps, bathed in a spotlight, Archuleta put on his serious camera face, narrowed his eyes and took a slow walk to the lip of the stage as he brought his voice to a crescendo and threw in a heretofore-hidden gritty lower register that added some soul to the vanilla ballad.

“This is one of the best performances of the season … and unbelievably molten hot. Crazy vocals!” Jackson exclaimed. Abdul chimed in with another song-title cliché, telling the nearly bawling Arch that “the sun is never going to go down on you, because you bring out so much sunshine.” Cowell took things down, and cautioned everyone to chill out before telling Archuleta that the song was the best he’d done so far in the competition. “Taking everything into account, round one goes to Archuleta,” Cowell said.

Rossi takes 90th win in France

What a fantastic race for Valentino Rossi at a mixed dry and wet race at Le mans. Starting 4th from the grid he fell back to 6th at the first corner before charging his way to the front. He finally took the lead from Stoner 1/3 through the race and never look back. Lorenzo also fight his way through the field from and finished 2nd despite riding with pain from his injury on both of his ankles completing the Fiat Yamaha 1-2 finish.

Rossi tied A. Nieto for the most wins with 90 and now leads the championship 3 points ahead of Lorenzo and Pedrosa which has 94 points a piece.

This is Rossi’s consecutive race wins after having a drought of 11 wins since last year. Stoner took the lead at the first corner followed by Pedrosa then Edwards. Rossi fell back to 6th and charged his way through the leading pack. Stoner had a problem while running 4th on the main straight and limped his way back to the pit to change bike. He eventually finished 16th and out of points, his first time to finish the race without scoing any points. Pedrosa had a strong 2nd position until Lorenzo made his move with a few laps left and Edwards did a similar thing to finished 3rd, his first podium finish of his career.

MotoGP season is now as exciting as ever as The Doctor find his rhythm and ready to rum away with the championship but Lorenzo and Pedrosa is hard on his heels. Next race is at Mugello in Italy in 2 weeks time.

Acer Travelmate 6291

I got myself an Acer Travelmate 6291 laptop last week and I chose this because it’s light at 4.4 lbs but at the same time packed with some computing power. It has a 12.1 inch LCD that gives crisp and vibrant colors. 160GB of SATA hard disk that will take some time before I can manage to make it half full plus a DVD writer. It comes with Vista Home premium. I just wish they put in 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB. For Vista machines, I think 2GB RAM would help make the booting a little bit faster and programs open a little bit quicker.

The TravelMate 6291 is powered by an Intel Centrino Duo T5500 (1.66GHz) processor. I made some kind of real world test and the TravelMate is certainly a dependable notebook for multitasking.

I ran a wordprocesser, open up a couple of browser, vanti-vrus running in the background and watched some videos simultaneously and the notebook performed without any hitches.

Speaking of performance, we tested the TravelMate’s battery stamina by playing a movie and some music in the background while surfing the Internet. Oh and the other thing I don’t like about it was when I played Live for Speed the frame rate was ridiculously low. It hit as low as 6 FPS when playing with 11 other cars. It goes to 21 FPS when you are all alone in track. For comparison, my desktop with AMD Athlon X2 4200 (2.2Ghz) with 1GB of RAM and built in GeForce 6100 will get me 40 FPS with 11 other cars around and goes to about 50 FPS when all alone in track. Heck even my old P4 machine with built in video card can at least get me 20 FPS with other cars around.

On the other hand, it’s WiFi connection is working great even if I’m like 20 meters away from my wifi router. I made a few voip calls using my Onesuite.com voip account and the conversation is clear even with the built in microphone and speaker.

I found that the TravelMate was able to last up to three hours with all the applications and WiFi running in the background, certainly more than enough to get some work done while on the go. Bottom line, if you are not into racing simulation games and always on the go, this laptop is perfect for you.

Full specifications:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (1.66GHz)

Memory: 1GB DDR2 RAM

Graphics: Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950 (224MB RAM)

Display: 12.1in LCD (1,280 x 800pixels)

Storage: 120GB SATA hard disk, 8x DVD double layer drive

Connectivity: WiFi (802.11a/b/g), 56Kbps modem, Bluetooth 2.0

I/O ports: 3x USB ports, Firewire port, VGA port, S-Video/TV-out

Other features: 5-in-1 card reader, integrated Acer OrbiCam 0.3- megapixel camera

Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium

Dimensions (w x d x h): 306 x 227 x 27.5/34.5mm

Weight: 4.4 lbs

Arkansas hit by storm and tornadoes

SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. – With a pep talk from Gov. Mike Beebe, emergency workers fanned out across Arkansas tohelp residents cope with another bout of violent weather that pushed the state’s storm death toll to 24 for the year.

“You can see the bags under the eyes of the people who consistently over and over again are called on to respond,” Beebe said. “That’s their job and that’s our job and we’ll do it, no matter how many hours it takes or how many days it takes.”

Eight Arkansans were killed Friday in thunderstorms that tore up parts of four states, while two dozen or more were injured. Forecasters said that, across middle America, more than 25 tornadoes may have touched down late Thursday and early Friday.

In Arkansas, destruction ran from Siloam Springs near the Oklahoma line to tiny communities along the Mississippi River. Powerful tornadoes killed 13 people in the state on Feb. 5 and another person on Jan. 8.

“This year it just seems like we’re getting pounded,” Van Buren County Sheriff Scott Bradley said.

Storms ripped off roofs and toppled train cars near Kansas City, Mo. Oklahoma endured severe hail, and tents tumbled at an open-air market in eastern Texas. Late Friday, a storm hit Earle in eastern Arkansas, then a line of severe thunderstorms pushed into Kentucky and threatened to dampen the Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

Wes Morrison, 24, was at a convenience store in Earle when a friend called to warn about the storm. “Dad and I took off,” Morrison said. “As we were (driving) down Main Street, you could just see that cloud twirling around.”

He and his father made it to an inside bathroom of his grandparents’ house just before the tornado came through, Morrison said.

“I don’t think it lasted but 10 seconds,” he said. “When it was over, the First Baptist Church of Earle, which is just across the street from my grandparents’ house — it’s gone.”

Wind knocked the roof off another church, one so new that neighbors said it had not yet held services.

Members of a work crew ran inside the Southside Baptist Church just north of the Van Buren County town of Damascus after a neighbor warned them of the coming storm. They said it was total silence as the storm approached.

“Everybody was afraid,” said Jesus Estrada, 22, a worker.

After the storm ripped through, he and others went down the street and aided firefighters who were helping people out of their homes. Afterward, they stood outside the battered church, having exchanged their soaked clothes for white choir robes.

Nearly 6,000 homes and businesses lost power in the state.