Google Hangouts is getting some nifty Q&A upgrades. “Presenters will now be able to select questions to answer and allow users to follow along on-screen. Questions can be solicited from up to one million concurrent viewers – not just those who are onscreen. Participating users can also vote on questions that they would like to see answered.”

More Google: Google Trends has new features that show what’s trending hot or not in its Top Charts feature. Interesting, but the categories are Google’s, and they just seem weirdly arbitary. Sure, actors and animals, but whiskeys? (Jonnie Walker is up, Crown Royal is down.) Space objects? (Jupiter is up, Saturn is down.)

More More Google: Google Creative Lab has launched Coder, a project that lets anyone easily turn a Raspberry Pi into a a basic Web server with a Web-based development environment.

More More More Google: The Galapagos Islands are now on Google Street View.

More(4) Google: Is Google going to get into hyperlocal news? Should this not have happened a loooong time ago?

Wow! How to download your streaming video items and watch them later. I didn’t know about any of these options, but then I don’t watch a lot of streaming video.

The NOAA has launched a dataset containing chemical analyses and other information from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. “This Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill dataset, including more than two million chemical analyses of sediment, tissue, water, and oil, as well as toxicity testing results and related documentation, is available to the public online at: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/deepwaterhorizon/specialcollections.html.”

Twitter has filed for an IPO.

More Twitter: Using Twitter analysis to beat the spread on NFL games.

More More Twitter: Apparently verified Twitter users get more functionality from the service. Awww. Now I feel like an unwashed mass.

The Library of Congress has launched a Twitter feed just for K-12 educators.

More Library of Congress: it has a beginner’s guide to federal statutes.

Wolfram|Alpha can now help you solve questions of “How many x would fill a y.” So you can ask it, How many jellybeans would fit in the sun? and it will tell you. I’m sure this will come in very handy for Turkey Volume Guessing Man. Good morning, Internet…

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