Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Does Google’s new privacy policy conflict with European law? France’s official data protection agency is launching an investigation to find out.

The Paris-based data watchdog CNIL will check out Google’s new policies across Europe, reports Reuters.

The team of regulators will produce questions for the company by mid-March, according to a letter CNIL sent Google.

“The CNIL and EU data authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services,” CNIL wrote to Google. “They have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing, and its compliance with European data protection legislation.”

Google announced controversial changes to its privacy policy in January. The updated rules will house all of Google’s products, including YouTube, Gmail and Google+, under one privacy roof.

Google also announced that it would start using data collected by non-search products (such as Google Docs) to improve results in Google Search. So if you often share news and photos of the latest sports cars on your Google+ profile, Google will now be able to use that data to give you Volkswagens instead of insects when you search the web for “beetle.”

Google reiterated its commitment to privacy in a blog post early this month — while saying it remains open to questions about the changes. Google also sent a letter to CNIL responding to its inquiry.

According to Google, these changes will make the overall Google experience simpler, more seamless and more user-friendly and cross-platform user data will not be shared with advertisers.

“As we’ve said several times over the past week, while our privacy policies will change on 1st March, our commitment to our privacy principles is as strong as ever,” wrote Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy counsel.

Google+ Hangouts were already popular with users who communicate with sign language, but thanks to improvements in video stability and a new “Take the Floor” feature, the popular group chat capability just got a lot more accessible for everyone.

Switching between speakers in Hangouts is automatic using voice activation, where whomever is talking the most (or the loudest) is shown in the main video area, and all others are seen in smaller video thumbnails. Sounds great, and that automatic switching it’s one of the coolest features of Google+ Hangouts.

But that wasn’t working as well for hearing-impaired users in chat areas where all users were signing — the main screen was usually occupied by whichever user’s microphone was picking up the most background noise. As a result, most users were often trying to read the sign language of people who were shown in tiny thumbnail screens.

Google’s fixed that with its new “Take the Floor” feature. In a Google+ post, Google engineering director Chee Chew explained how it works:

1) Have everyone mute their audio.

2) When you want to sign something, hit Shift+s.

3) When you see yourself as the main video, that’s your cue. You’ve got the floor… everyone’s main video has switched to you. Sign away.

Chew added, “We’ve noticed over the past few weeks that the stability and quality of the video in Hangouts has improved as well, which also makes it easier for the hearing impaired to see and understand sign language.”

Great idea, Google.

via WebProNews

The 200 millionth Tweep signed up for a Twitter account, and to commemorate the occasion we bring you this infographic tracing the history of the platform that led up to that mind-boggling number.

If that 200 millionth Twitterer figure impresses you, get a load of the biggest number on this infographic: 350 billion tweets delivered each day.

Even though Twitter started out with users feeling cramped within its 140-character confines and talking about what they had for breakfast, today it’s turned into an explosive dynamo that instantly brings you news from all over the world. In fact, some have even blamed/credited it with overthrowing governments.

The service has enjoyed spectacular growth over the past five years — its official fifth birthday was in March, but it first became available to the general public in July, 2006.

And now that Jerry Seinfeld has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, it reminds us that the little tweeting platform that was once about nothing, well, now it’s about something. Something big. One thing’s for sure: It’s changed the world.

Music-sharing platform Soundcloud has become mighty noisy over the past year by adding 4 million registered users in one year, which now brings it to the 5 million user mark. This comes just a few months after the company announced 3 million users.

Soundcloud, which reports that it is currently adding 20,000 registered users per day, has innovated a lot during the past year after launching in 2008. It released both iPhone and Android applications, as well as a Mac App, and added the ability to record directly from all of its platforms. Its API has also been integrated across an array of social tools, including popular blogging platform Tumblr.

Tech-savvy actor Ashton Kutcher has also joined the site, and invested in the company via his fund, A-Grade.

An increasing number of artists (as well as journalists and other sound creators) are turning to Soundcloud in order to share music and get feedback. Although the site is still largely a backend-centric tool, we’ll be interested to see how it continues to evolve as more users join. Might we suggest a more organized, consumer-facing side for the fans of those 5 million creators?

Check out the infographic below for more facts about the company’s history.

YouTube is matching up members of Congress for debates on hot issues in a new channel launching on Wednesday.

The channel, dubbed YouTube Town Hall, is filled with debates surrounding the budget, economy, energy, Afghanistan, education and healthcare. Initially topics were chosen by popularity on Google News and Google web search over the past year, but YouTube plans to accept questions from viewers in the future.

Each debate features two members of Congress who explain their points of view on the given topic in videos made especially for the Town Hall channel.

Sides are not necessarily drawn along party lines, and viewers only find out what party each debater belongs to (unless they recognize him or her, of course) after they choose which person’s perspective they support. Those votes will be tallied and displayed on a leader board to show who is “winning” the debate.

YouTube first started encouraging Congress members’ content in January 2009, with the launch of The Senate Hub and The House Hub. YouTube Head of News and Politics Steve Grove estimates that at that time, about half of the members of Congress had YouTube channels. Now, well over 90% have them, and several presidential candidates — including President Obama — have used YouTube to launch their campaigns.

“Politicians are realizing that being on YouTube is not just a hobby,” Grove says. “It’s faster than other media, more ubiquitous than other media. It’s sight, sound and emotion all in one. It’s probably the most comprehensive way you have to get a message out there.”

It was 50 years ago when people first flew in space. Here’s an infographic that shows you the spacecraft humans have flown to reach that great void over the past half-century.

With just two flights of the space shuttle left, what’s next? You can see Richard Branson‘s SpaceShipOne in the infographic, giving us a look forward at what’s waiting in the wings — vessels that might find a different financial route to space, relying on private funding rather than governmental largess.

All is not lost, though, for the U.S. manned space program. Even though NASA‘s Ares launch vehicles and their associated Constellation program were canceled because of budget constraints, NASA selected SpaceX and its Falcon launch vehicles and Dragon spacecraft for the space agency’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

SpaceX successfully test flew its Falcon 9 launch vehicle with an unmanned Dragon spacecraft along for the ride last December, and just last week introduced its newest heavy-lift rocket, the massive 27-engine Falcon Heavy that’s the biggest rocket since the Saturn V. SpaceX says that monster will fly in 2013.

What you think of human space travel? Post a comment!

Infographic courtesy Space.com

Gas prices have risen drastically this week, thanks to that ongoing revolution in Libya. This could get expensive, but we can ease the pain. All you need is an iPhone and one of the three free apps we found to help you locate the cheapest gas near you.

You know when crude oil prices peak at $103 a barrel as they did this week, there’s going to be a trickle-down effect, clipping all of us at the pump. According to AAA, gasoline prices rose $.10 over the past week. Could five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline be far behind? Darin Newsom, senior analyst at energy tracker DTN told USA Today he thinks “$5 gas isn’t out of the question.”

If you’re at home, go to Gas Buddy to check prices near you. If you’re on the road, you’ll need an app. Here are three handy iPhone apps that use GPS to figure out where you’re located, and then direct you to the cheapest gas station nearby. Because we’re trying to save money, we decided to find those gas-pricing apps that are absolutely free, and here’s our trio, ranked Good, Better and Best.