I guess no one has a clue what the increasingly fashionable term “cloud computing” means. At least, that’s the message we’re meant to take away from a new video from Cisco (CSCO), where many people are asked what cloud computing is, and most of the on-camera responses are confused, way out there, or both.

Here’s my favorite description: “Cloud computing is where God allowed all the clouds to be connected together by the angels.”

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For most people (including me), privacy policies fall into the same category as “terms of service” documents–they contain important information, but are usually so long and impenetrably written that they’re not worth the effort of reading. AT&T says it’s trying to take a different approach with a draft privacy policy that it published this morning, one that’s actually comprehensible to your average reader.

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A variety of social network gaming applications are making lots of money from virtual goods. But could these services soon find themselves in trouble for allowing gambling — and get slapped with large fines or other punishment?

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Ebay (EBAY) has a problem: It’s viewed as a quirky second-hand bazaar. That has stunted the company’s growth, as shoppers in search of instant bargains bypass eBay in favor of Amazon (AMZN) or Google (GOOG).

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The majority of people who send text messages on Twitter are male, according to a study released by Nielsen Mobile, a mobile market research company.

The study which studied usage of SMS during the fourth quarter of 2008, found that some 57 percent of Twitter users are men, while only 45 percent of users of Predicto, another texting community are male.

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You can’t get more meta than a site that micro-blogs trends in micro-blogging. But we’re through the looking glass anyway, so here goes: Tinker.com, part of the distinguished Glam Media Network, is live streaming the Twitter race to a million followers between Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and CNN (@cnnbrk).

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During the “Launch Pad” session, five start-ups took a grilling from developers, journalists and venture capitalists, then faced a crowd vote at the Web 2.0 Expo’s version of “American Idol.”

As attendees texted their votes, moderator John Battelle, founder of Federated Media Publishing, jokingly asked: “Want to have a dance-off?”

None were necessary. The techies in attendance were starry-eyed for all things mobile, picking Nitobi’s PhoneGap, an open-source tool for building mobile apps, as the People’s Choice winner. Life-tracking site zeaLOG was a close second.

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One of the biggest complaints about Twitter is that its 140-character limit is simply not enough to say what you need to say sometimes. Of course, this limit works both ways–it can also stop people from going on for too long about something. And that’s something that politicians are known for. So in a way, an interview with a politician conducted entirely over Twitter almost makes sense. Almost.

And that’s exactly what ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos is planning to do next week. On Tuesday, Stephanopoulos will interview senator and former presidential candidate John McCain for his show, “This Week.” To conduct what the network is calling the first “twitterview,” both the questions and answers will be sent out via Twitter, bound by the 140 character limit.

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Those who are deeply disturbed about the rise in location-based applications and services and their impacts on personal privacy can breath a small sigh of relief tonight. Google (GOOG), which recently entered the space with its Latitude location network feature, has agreed to take a stand for user location privacy, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It’s the second company doing location services after Loopt to adopt the policy, which the EFF summarizes as basically, “come back with a warrant.”

What’s at stake here is actually pretty big. If a company like Google knows your whereabouts at all times because of Latitude, authorities may want the right to demand that information from Google. But Google is saying it will require authorities to provide it with a wiretap order before such information is given out.

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Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Delicious. These are all social sites that are well known for sharing stories with a massive amount of people. Yahoo Buzz? Not so much. But apparently, it’s also in the business of sharing stories. And today is its first birthday.

In a message it sent out on Twitter, Yahoo (YHOO) notes that a story is buzzed (voted on) every two seconds. It claims that 300 million story clicks have resulted from buzzed-up stories that make Yahoo.com–and incredibly, that it’s the number one social content site.

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Before it settled on AT&T (T) as the carrier for the iPhone in the United States, Apple (AAPL) shopped the phone to Verizon Wireless and was shot down. It’s thought that Verizon (VZ) didn’t want to make the concessions (including ceding a lot of control) to Apple, which AT&T ended up doing. Of course, the mobile landscape was very different at the time, and now it’s hard to argue that the iPhone hasn’t changed things significantly. So it wouldn’t be a surprise if Verizon wanted another shot at the iPhone. And if a new rumor coming out of Italy is true, it may get that shot.

The report, by ITExaminer.com, claims to have “deep throats” in Apple saying that iPhones for Verizon Wireless will be announced “soon.” It goes on to say the deal is so secret that Apple isn’t talking about it at all and has been trying to hide job postings for EVDO and CDMA engineers–two cellular technologies that Verizon Wireless uses but AT&T does not.

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Ever heard the phrase, “Why is everyone always talking about Twitter?” Well, here’s the reason, maybe. The micromessaging service is getting half of social network Facebook’s press coverage, according to Google Trends stats for both companies in the U.S.–even though searches for Facebook dwarf searches for Twitter. Why are there more searches for Facebook than for Twitter in the U.S.? Because Facebook has more than 46 million monthly active users here while Twitter gets an undisclosed, but certainly lesser amount of twaffic, I mean traffic.

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Why should location-based social networks be worried about Google (GOOG)? Because its new Latitude product was able to gain over a million users in just a week, Google’s vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra told an audience at the Mobile World Congress today.

Latitude is Google’s service that uses your location to place you on a Google Map. If you have friends who are also using the service, you can see how close they are to you on your map and read their status updates. It’s a similar idea to what start-ups like Loopt and Pelago’s Whrrl do.

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Digital toys and Web sites for kids have had a mixed history. But the future is so full of techno-savvy kids that toy makers are finding they have no choice but to move into the digital realm by providing better online entertainment, as well as digital toys in the physical world.

Mattel (MAT) is going to do that by making its first full-scale appearance on the show floor of the International Consumer Electronics Show, which features a Kids@Play Summit this week in Las Vegas. Among the moves Mattel is announcing is a complete revamping of its online strategy, which will now target everyone from small kids to adults to bring out the “kid in all of us.”

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Facebook’s developer platform was a watershed. It gave outside companies unprecedented access to users of a major social network. But the platform, launched in May, has come under increasing scrutiny. Facebook has continued to change the technology and the rules governing what developers can and can’t do on the site. The issue is whether or not Facebook’s platform, including newly-launched “Facebook Connect,” is stable enough to justify other companies making the effort to use it.

Heralded last year as one of the most exciting new areas for investment, the platform has seen its hype diminish, even as it has gradually matured. But third-party applications are doing better than ever, Facebook says–especially apps built to make use of the redesigned interface the company introduced this fall.

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