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Just when you thought that Google owned everything they are now going after DoubleClick.com. Businessweek.com reports that the FTC ruled in Google’s favor today 12/20/07 but they still need approval from EU’s anti-trust commission. Google is prepared to shell out $3.1 Billion to close this deal.

Now it seems that Google is starting to feel the heat from other advertising agencies in this Billion Dollar industry. Microsoft is really trying to get their head back in the game since they suck so bad and from what it looks like they are leaving software behind. Microsoft already has their Ads running on Major sites such as Digg.com, Facebook and Newscorp ” FoxNews”.

So Lets see what happens.

You can read more on this article at Businessweek

Just tonight I logged into Google reader to take a look at my RSS feeds and I was invited to use ‘ shared items ‘. I am not sure if this is something new or I was just blind and did not see this ever. So I checked this out and looked a little further into this.

It seems now that Google has added a new feature into the Google reader which will allow you to flag individual post from your RSS feed and dump them into a shared folder. This shared folder is then made public so that the world may see them. When you want to view others you would simply select ‘ friends shared items ‘. Inside of that option you can select who’s reader you want to view.

Its that simple just one more way of getting your story out!

Google has kicked off a project to create an authoritative store of information about any and every topic.The search giant has already started inviting people to write about the subject on which they are known to be an expert.Google said it would not act as editor for the project but will provide the tools and infrastructure for the pages.Many experts see the initiative as an attack on the widely used

Wikipedia communal encyclopaedia.

‘Knol’

Writing about the project on the official Google blog, Udi Manber, one of the heads of engineering at the search firm, said it was all about sharing useful knowledge.

By indexing the web, Google strives to make information more easily accessible. However, wrote Mr Manber, not all the information on the web was “well organised to make it easily discoverable”.

By getting respected authors to write about their specialism Google hopes to start putting some of that information in better order.

The system will centre around authored articles created with a tool Google has dubbed “knol” - the word denotes a unit of knowledge - that will make webpages with a distinctive livery to identify them as authoritative.

Mr Manber wrote: “A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.”

The knol pages will get search rankings to reflect their usefulness. Knols will also come with tools that readers can use to rate the information, add comments, suggest edits or additional content.

Revenue from any adverts on a knol page will be shared with its author.

Industry commentator Nicholas Carr said the knol project was a “head-on competitor” with Wikipedia. He said it was an attempt by Google to knock ad-free Wikipedia entries on similar subjects down the rankings.

So I’m pinging a web-server tonight to find out the IP address and I receive this message.  The last time that I checked PING was a valid windows command!.

Man this sucks I was listening to the radio this morning and found that that Evel Knievel just died.  The man who lived his life for stunts and even had action figures died in his sleep.   I remember just this week he settled a lawsuit with Kayne West for mimicking him in a video.  Anyhow if you did not read about it yet here is an article from the AP.

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho’s Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Knievel’s death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.

Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills. He also suffered two strokes in recent years.

Longtime friend and promoter Billy Rundle said Knievel had trouble breathing at his Clearwater condominium and died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital.

“It’s been coming for years, but you just don’t expect it. Superman just doesn’t die, right?” Rundle said.

Immortalized in the Washington’s Smithsonian Institution as “America’s Legendary Daredevil,” Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.

“I think he lived 20 years longer than most people would have” after so many injuries, said his son Kelly Knievel, 47. “I think he willed himself into an extra five or six years.”

Though Knievel dropped off the pop culture radar in the ’80s, the image of the high-flying motorcyclist clad in patriotic, star-studded colors was never erased from public consciousness. He always had fans and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years.

His death came just two days after it was announced that he and rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of Knievel’s trademarked image in a popular West music video.

Knievel made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. Thousands came to Butte, Mont., every year as his legend was celebrated during the “Evel Knievel Days” festival, which Rundle organizes.

“They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives,” Knievel said. “People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner.”

For the tall, thin daredevil, the limelight was always comfortable, the gab glib. To Knievel, there always were mountains to climb, feats to conquer.

“No king or prince has lived a better life,” he said in a May 2006 interview with The Associated Press. “You’re looking at a guy who’s really done it all. And there are things I wish I had done better, not only for me but for the ones I loved.”

He had a knack for outrageous yarns: “Made $60 million, spent 61. …Lost $250,000 at blackjack once. … Had $3 million in the bank, though.”

He began his daredevil career in 1965 when he formed a troupe called Evel Knievel’s Motorcycle Daredevils, a touring show in which he performed stunts such as riding through fire walls, jumping over live rattlesnakes and mountain lions and being towed at 200 mph behind dragster race cars.

In 1966 he began touring alone, barnstorming the West and doing everything from driving the trucks, erecting the ramps and promoting the shows. In the beginning he charged $500 for a jump over two cars parked between ramps.

He steadily increased the length of the jumps until, on New Year’s Day 1968, he was nearly killed when he jumped 151 feet across the fountains in front of Caesar’s Palace. He cleared the fountains but the crash landing put him in the hospital in a coma for a month.

His son, Robbie, successfully completed the same jump in April 1989.

In the years after the Caesar’s crash, the fee for Evel’s performances increased to $1 million for his jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London — the crash landing broke his pelvis — to more than $6 million for the Sept. 8, 1974, attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in a rocket-powered “Skycycle.” The money came from ticket sales, paid sponsors and ABC’s “Wide World of Sports.”

The parachute malfunctioned and deployed after takeoff. Strong winds blew the cycle into the canyon, landing him close to the swirling river below.

On Oct. 25, 1975, he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at Kings Island in Ohio.

Knievel decided to retire after a jump in the winter of 1976 in which he was again seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and broke both arms in an attempt to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheater. He continued to do smaller exhibitions around the country with his son, Robbie.

Many of his records have been broken by daredevil motorcyclist Bubba Blackwell.

Knievel also dabbled in movies and TV, starring as himself in “Viva Knievel” and with Lindsay Wagner in an episode of the 1980s TV series “Bionic Woman.” George Hamilton and Sam Elliott each played Knievel in movies about his life.

Evel Knievel toys accounted for more than $300 million in sales for Ideal and other companies in the 1970s and ’80s.

Born Robert Craig Knievel in the copper mining town of Butte on Oct. 17, 1938, Knievel was raised by his grandparents. He traced his career choice back to the time he saw Joey Chitwood’s Auto Daredevil Show at age 8.

“The phrase one-of-a-kind is often used, but it probably applies best to Bobby Knievel,” said former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., Knievel’s cousin. “He was an amazing athlete… He was sharp as a tack, one of the smartest people I’ve ever known and finally, as the world knows, no one had more guts than Bobby. He was simply unafraid of anything.”

“He was no dummy,” said high school classmate Sonny Holland, the former Montana State football star and coach. “I’ll never forget a poem that he made up when we were seniors about his friends and the people he hung out with. It was incredible. Everybody was just astounded when he recited it in front of the whole school.”

Outstanding in track and field, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High School, Knievel went on to win the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men’s ski jumping championship in 1957 and played with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959.

He also formed the Butte Bombers semiprofessional hockey team, acting as owner, manager, coach and player.

Knievel also worked in the Montana copper mines, served in the Army, ran his own hunting guide service, sold insurance and ran Honda motorcycle dealerships. As a motorcycle dealer, he drummed up business by offering $100 off the price of a motorcycle to customers who could beat him at arm wrestling.

At various times and in different interviews, Knievel claimed to have been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker, a holdup man.

Evel Knievel married hometown girlfriend, Linda Joan Bork, in 1959. They separated in the early 1990s. They had four children, Kelly, Robbie, Tracey and Alicia.

Robbie Knievel followed in his father’s footsteps as a daredevil, jumping a moving locomotive in a 200-foot, ramp-to-ramp motorcycle stunt on live television in 2000. He also jumped a 200-foot-wide chasm of the Grand Canyon.

Knievel lived with his longtime partner, Krystal Kennedy-Knievel, splitting his time between their Clearwater condo and Butte. They married in 1999 and divorced a few years later but remained together. Knievel had 10 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.