Nothing unites the country like a sporting event, and 9 June sees the beginning of the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

While England is the UK’s sole representative at the tournament, we doubt that our Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish readers will be tuning out entirely if only in the hope of seeing Eriksson’s army take a pasting.

The first thing to download is the Computeractive World Cup planner spreadsheet using the link above. This works best with Microsoft Excel, but if you don't have this OpenOffice can be used instead.

The spreadsheet is not much use without the information to add to it. RSS is a really simple way to do this, as headlines are automatically downloaded to your computer. Awasu is a good standalone program for reading news via RSS.

An alternative is to download and install the Yahoo Widget Engine. Widgets are very small programs such as the Germany 2006 World Cup RSS that shows headlines as they appear. Another fun widet is the WorldCup Countdown timer. 

Traditional websites are still going to be the main source of information and the Official World Cup website is the best place to start. For more local information, the Football Association's World Cup pages also hold lots of information. And don't forget to look at BBC Sports coverage either.

The World Cup is likely to be a showcase for high definition TV with both the BBC and ITV showing matches in this higher quality format. As neither ordinary TV or Freeview can handle HD at the moment, these matches will be shown via Sky and Telewest.

Radio is not dead yet with coverage from TalkSport both over the airwaves and live over the internet.

Finally, a small flutter on William Hill will add some extra excitment to the tournament. Remember never to bet more than you can afford to lose. Help is at hand from Gamblers Anonymous.