Shay Given: ‘Do you ever get over being dropped for an FA Cup final

Shay Given has been trying his best to put a positive spin on his three previous trips to Wembley when it dawns upon the Aston Villa goalkeeper that he is kidding nobody as he dances around a question about whether the stadium actually holds any happy memories for him. “It was a politician’s answer, wasn’t it,” Given says, laughing.

The truth is that Given is desperate for his luck to change in Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool at Wembley. Given was in the Newcastle United team that lost 2-0 to Arsenal in the FA Cup final in 1998, dropped from the starting XI at Wembley the following year when Ruud Gullit’s side were beaten by Manchester United – a decision that still rankles with him – and an unused Manchester City substitute during their triumph over Stoke City in 2011.

It hardly makes for great reading and Given, who turns 39 on Monday, is not the sort of player to put a trophy alongside his name when his part in that final with City was confined to warming up with Joe Hart beforehand. “Not really,” the Republic of Ireland international says, when asked whether he considers himself an FA Cup winner. “I’ve got a winner’s medal at home – I don’t even know where it is, if I’m being honest. It was nice to be part of winning it with Man City but when you don’t play it doesn’t have the same value to it … you don’t really get that feeling that you’ve done anything.”

Angel Di Maria tells Manchester United he wants to stay, and is set to extend lease on new family home

Angel Di Maria has told boss Louis van Gaal he is happy to stay at Manchester Unitednext term, writes Steve Bates in the Sunday People .

The £59.7million British record signing is in discussions about extending the lease on the city centre apartment he is renting.

Argentinian Di Maria was badly shaken in February, after his family were victims of an attempted gunpoint burglary at their £4m rented mansion in the Cheshire village of Prestbury, close to where skipper Wayne Rooney and several other Old Trafford stars live.

Di Maria was at home having dinner with his wife Jorgelina and daughter Mia, now two, when the armed thugs tried to break in.

The South American, signed from Real Madrid last summer, held discussions with Van Gaal and senior club officials after the incident amid fears he wanted to quit England.

Van Gaal recently refused to rule out allowing Di Maria to leave on compassionate grounds – but the star has told the club he is staying, despite only being a sub in yesterday’s title showdown with Chelsea.

The 27-year-old winger and his family have now settled into an apartment in central Manchester and are over their ordeal.

Di Maria has told friends it has been the toughest year of his career after also struggling with the physical demands and intensity of the Premier League.

The attacker has not scored a league goal since October 5, and his misery was compounded when he was sent off for pushing referee Michael Oliver in the 2-1 FA Cup defeat by Arsenal last month.

But despite being dropped Van Gaal has been impressed with his attitude, and is confident he will play a major role next season.

How to use Google to find your lost Android phone

We've all lost our mobile phone at one point or another -- sometimes in our homes, sometimes in the car and sometimes out in the wild unknown. Now instead of searching everywhere to track it down, you can rely on Google for help.

A new feature unveiled on Wednesday lets you search for your Android phone or tablet using Google's search engine on your PC, as long as you meet the right criteria.

Here's how it works:

• First, you have to make sure you're logged in to the same Google account on your PC's browser that you use on your phone. You must also be sure to have the latest version of theGoogle app installed on your phone.
• Now type the phrase "find my phone" into Google's search engine on your PC. In response, Google displays a map that attempts to zero in on the location of your device. Give it at least several seconds, and you should eventually see a location on the map that's accurate to a certain distance. For example, the map told me that the location of my device was accurate to 46 feet.

OK, that's fine. But what if your phone is lost somewhere in your home? Sorry, but Google won't tell you what room it's in. But it can ring your device so you can try to track it down yourself.

• To pinpoint your device, click the icon or link for Ring on the map. Your device will ring at full volume for up to five minutes. Once you find it, simply click the power button to turn off the ringing.

But what if you own an Android tablet instead of a phone? You can still use the find feature. I used it to locate my Nexus 7 tablet, and it worked just fine. Google zeroed in on the slate's location. Clicking on the Ring icon fired up the ring sound on my tablet so I was able to locate it.

The Google search feature isn't the only way to track down a lost Android device. A similar feature, called Android Device Manager, can locate and ring your device. If you think your device has been stolen, you can also remotely lock it and reset the password or erase its data. To learn how to use Android Device Manager, check out this helpful how-to article from CNET.

Apple offers a similar tracking feature, called Find My iPhone. Using your iCloud account's find optionor the Find My iPhone app, you can track down your iPhone or iPad, ring it to locate its exact location, lock it or erase its data.

So whether you own an Android phone or tablet, or an iPhone or iPad, you do have options for tracking it down the next time it goes into hiding.

You can now get your free EE Power bar and swap it for newly charged ones in store

EE announced its free portable charger scheme at the beginning of April and said it was "coming soon", but it is now available to all of its network and broadband customers. The EE Power incentive launches today to offer a free portable PowerBar charger to customers which can be swapped for a new full one in-store when depleted.

EE Power will keep EE's customers charged up all day with what seems like a great idea, as long as you can get to an EE shop for the swap when needed.

The EE Power Bar has a 2,600mAh capacity, built-in LED torch, lasts 500 charges and takes 4-hours to charge back to full.

The EE Power Bar is free to EE customers who are either on a 30 day, 12, 18 or 24 month mobile or broadband contract or to Pay As You Go customers who have been with EE for more than three months.

To get a Power Bar EE customers need to send a 35p text (send "POWER" to 365) which will tell them when their unit is ready to collect in an EE shop.

Once the Power Bar is used the owner can either keep charging it themselves and using it, or swap it out for a fully charged unit at an EE shop. This is free and can be done as many times as the person wants, says EE.

EE ran a similar scheme at Glastonbury last year. It must have been a big success for it to roll out the EE Power offering so soon after, on a national scale.

EE says that it's superfast 4G LTE is being used by more and more people to stream video, which is costly to battery. The result is EE Power which should allow its customers truly unlimited access to 4G data streaming – presuming they've paid for it in their contracts of course.

What You Didn't Know About What You Already Know About Easter

Through centuries and across cultures, the holiday's iconic customs have been built upon with the help of storytelling. And the cotton-tailed creature that leaves us chocolate and eggs has a longer tale.

1. Pagan Beginnings

The story of Easter is as much rooted in paganism as it is in Christianity. The holiday owes its name to Eostra, the Germanic goddess of spring and fertility.

The University of Florida's Center for Children's Literature traced Easter's origins to pre-Christian Germany. An Easter Bunny character first hopped up in the 8th century with the English monk Bede's The Reckoning of Time. CCL recounts the tale:

A little girl found a bird that was close to death and prayed to Eostra for help. Eostra appeared, crossing a rainbow bridge — the snow melting before her feet. Seeing the bird was badly wounded, she turned it into a hare, and told the little girl that from now on, the hare would come back once a year bearing rainbow colored eggs.

But because this legend is held up exclusively by Bede, Easter's namesake continues to be a contentious scholarly debate.

2. The Bunny Tale

Legends featuring bunny imagery associated to Easter continued to be written down in 1500s Germany and the first story about a rabbit hiding eggs in a garden was published in 1680. As many Southwestern German immigrants settled in America, the Easter Bunny lived on in Pennsylvania Dutch tales of the Bunny as the "Oschter Haws," where Germantown, Pa., children were gifted with eggs in their Easter bonnets that, today, are replaced by Easter baskets.

3. Cracking Open The Egg

Egg decorating is at least a 60,000-year-old activity, practiced by the likes of Egyptians, Persians, Greeks and Kalahari Bushmen, who engraved ostrich eggs. Before giving colored eggs found its way into the modern Christian tradition, early Mesopotamian Christians dyed eggs red to symbolize the blood shed by Christ during his crucifixion.

An "Easter egg," as it relates to hidden symbols or messages planted in a pop culture medium by its creator, was first coined by the Atari programmer Warren Robinett, who designed a secret room in the 1979 video game, Adventure.

4. Less Than Humane

It wouldn't be Easter if we didn't eat candy animals. Easter bunnies turned edible in 1800s Germany when they were first made of pastry and sugar.

Animal rights activists have protested against the ritual of coloring chicks by infusing dye into the embryo before it hatches.

5. For Peeps Sake

Speaking of dyeing chicks, one of the reasons Peeps keep coming back every year is because they are so resilient and multi-purpose. Unless you're gulping down the marshmallow birds for a challenge, a common practice is to microwave Peeps. If you think that's inhumane, some enthusiasts even take it further with Peep joustingtournaments.

Happy Easter 2015: Easter Greetings, Wishes to Send to Family, Friends [PHOTOS]

Christians all over the world are busy with their holy week, which will end on the day after Easter. This year, the holy festival falls on 5 April.

The Friday in Easter week is known as Good Friday, Holy Friday, Great Friday, Black Friday or Easter Friday. It is the day when Jesus Christ's crucifixion took place, leading to his death at Calvary.

Sunday is celebrated as the Easter Day as it is on this day that Christ resurrected. Christians believe, according to Scripture, that Jesus came back to life or was raised from the dead, three days after his death on the cross.

Easter is a holy festival, during which special prayers are sung in praise of Jesus Christ in church. It is then followed by an elaborate Sunday mass, with happy music being played in the background. People also decorate eggs as part of the celebration and they are known as "Easter Eggs".

Check out the above slideshow of Easter greetings and also look below for a few wishes to send to family and friends:

• "May you feel the joy of the presence of Jesus. The Lord has risen to bless us this Easter. And I pray that the love of God is resurrected, reborn and renewed in your heart. Happy Easter."

• "The story of Easter is the story of Gods wonderful window of divine surprise."

• "The seasonal remembrance of resurrection is here again, and whole world is reminded of the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, son of God, saviour of mankind."

• "The best thing about Easter Sunday is being with family and good friends. Happy Easter!"

• "Let the resurrection joy lift us from loneliness and weakness and despair to strength and beauty and happiness."