MIT’s OpenCourseWare project represents a progressive take on the future of education in regards to an increasingly global world. The program, which seeks to put the best of an MIT education within reach of anyone with a computer, has been around for quite some time now but has just recently become accessible from all corners of the planet thanks to the growing availability of broadband access.

The program already has an extensive collection of lectures and reading material on everything from Architecture and Engineering to Management and Physics - with new material arriving almost daily. To date, MIT’s pilot program has made some 1800 courses available to anyone with the web; in fact, it’s entirely possible that a relatively young child somewhere in Egypt is hard at work studying the words of some of MIT’s finest as you’re reading this.

To further the global reach of its OpenCourseWare program, MIT has begun making its materials available in an increasing number of languages including Traditional Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese with more to follow sometime in the near future.

Though the program represents the bulk of MIT’s undergraduate and graduate curriculum, the institution is careful to note that its program is not equivalent to a full education and that its online libraries do not come with degrees. Still, the possibilities created by the widespread availability of such a sheer amount of educational material are sure to open doors for children and adults alike both here at home and abroad as more of the world becomes connected each day.

Globally, MIT’s OpenCourseWare site is accessed by more than 1.5 million people each month - a testament to the impact already delivered by its unique take on the world of knowledge. In the wake of its success, a number of other prestigious universities including Stanford and UCLA have followed suit with similar (but smaller) programs that complement Apple’s iTunes U service - currently anchored by a substantial amount of content from MIT’s program.

While the service may not provide a degree, it does provide a wealth of knowledge at a price that can’t be argued with - free. In fact, by design, OpenCourseWare is perhaps the least restricted form of modern education available anywhere in the world. Anyone, at any time, can begin to teach his or herself some of the most complicated topics in the world thanks to the extensive library at their fingertips thanks to MIT. Of course, it goes without saying that without class times, grades, and other time constraints imposed by attendance at a university, the ease at which someone can pick up a subject in his or her spare time increases tenfold.

With MIT in front of you, you’re free to learn, well, whatever it is that you’d like to learn. How about a little physics on your lunch break?

Chances are, Google has been your friend for quite some time now. It’s no doubt one of the most used words in the English language and it might even be your homepage. But, despite your familiarity with the simple search-engine you know and love, you probably aren’t taking advantage of everything Google can do for you.

Take the company’s Transit application, for instance. Using Google Transit, you can get step-by-step directions from one location to another solely via public transportation. Though the service isn’t available in every metropolitan area as of yet, it is available in some 52 cities nationwide and an additional 17 worldwide - with more soon to follow.

In their efforts to further assist your life on-the-go, Google’s SMS and GOOG-411 services can help you locate a nearby restaurant, find a phone number, of provide simple answers to basic questions. While neither service is entirely new, both are worth looking into if you haven’t yet hopped on to the Smart Phone bandwagon. To use Google SMS, simply text a phrase describing what you’re looking for (Ex. Stock AAPL, Weather San Francisco, Pizza 90234) to “466453″ or “Google.” If pushing buttons isn’t your favorite pass time, Google’s 411 service works equally well. Just dial 1-800-GOOG-411, say your location, and then say what you’re looking for. You’ll be given a list of options and, after choosing the one you were looking for, connected for free to your business of choice.

Beyond productivity boosters, the company has also launched a few other new services with extended functionality that can potentially make your life a little less hectic. Google’s new Health service allows you to create and manage your own personal health profile - complete with current medications, medical history, and other medical records that can be easily shared with your doctor(s) at the touch of a button. You can also search for new or current doctors, connect to online medical advice, and look up health conditions from a growing list of everything from simple to more complex conditions and diseases.

Also new to the Google family is the addition of Custom Search Functionality. While this isn’t something that most users will be clamoring to use, it is a great idea for anyone with a website. Using a number of parameters that the web master defines, Custom Search tailors Google’s search engine to search only for specific things. An animal site dedicated to information on different kinds of dogs, for example, could utilize Custom Search to create a search engine that only returned results relating to dogs. Even searching for simple things like “shirts” would return only shirts designed with dogs in mind. Of course, despite its target audience, the average user will probably begin to encounter Custom Search on a variety of websites (possibly including Foozoo) in the near future.

If you follow the news regularly, you might have noticed a bit of controversy developing around Google’s new Maps extension, Street View. Despite the slightly exaggerated fear of privacy concerns, Street View is a very cool tool that is just now becoming useful. Over the past several months, an army of Google vans and hybrids have been scouring the streets of the United States and France (part of Google’s special first-person follow-along during the Tour De France) grabbing 360° views of storefronts, avenues, and intersections. As of this writing, Google has already indexed quite a bit of the country (including my house), with more photos being added almost daily as their mobile fleet continues its mission across the country. If you’re in need of a little entertainment for the rest of the day, give Google Street View a quick Google to see some of the comical things that have been accidentally captured by the company’s recorders including a variety of accidents, arguments, and other encounters.

To see what else Google’s hiding beyond its simple search box, check out its archive of applications along with the now famous Labs section.

Voltaic’s line of solar-equipped bags are great for anyone who spends a lot of time on their computers away from the wonderful world of outlets. With more and more parks around the world beginning to offer free wi-fi connectivity, a way to charge your gadgets while in the middle of Hyde Park is a welcome addition to any green geek on the go.

Voltaic offers two different backpacks (large and small), a messenger bag, and soon a larger briefcase - all of which are made from the company’s unique recycled PET material (essentially a soda-bottle composite). Though the backpacks and messenger bag weigh in at a measly 4 watts, they should be able to give your iPod three hours of music for each hour spent in direct sunlight.

In terms of design, the bags are aesthetically similar to most similar bags (minus the solar panels, of course). The company does include an indicator built into its raised logo on each bag that lights up when the battery is charging. While the feature is expected, the way in which its delivered is stylish to say the least.

The company’s new, larger “Generator” bag comes in at 17 watts with enough power to fuel a small stereo system directly or to fully charge your Macbook Pro after most of the day’s worth of direct sunlight. Of course, you could also charge the integrated battery included in all of Voltaic’s bags using a nearby outlet to give yourself an extra boost of power on a less-than-sunny day.

While Voltaic’s solar solutions are intriguing and, from the looks of them, quite durable, portable solar systems on the whole still have a ways to go before they’re practical enough to keep you away from the outlets at a nearby Starbucks. Recent developments in the field have paved the way for a new breed of solar technologies that are more flexible and far cheaper than what is available today. Still, for the green-minded geek on the go, Voltaic’s bags may be worth their hefty price tags that range anywhere from $199 (for iPods) to $599 (for laptops).

San Francisco based Meraki is hard at work on giving the nearly one-million people in their fair city free, ubiquitous internet access; of course, if they get their way, they’ll have the whole world connected in a matter of years. Using wireless repeaters that are distributed free-of-charge to people with internet access, the company has quickly built a free wireless network throughout San Francisco that, as of today, reaches 114,527 users with even more joining on every hour.

Like many of today’s most ambitious tech-projects, Meraki began as an MIT research project aimed at bettering the world; in this case, their goal was to give free wireless internet to MIT Graduate students. The project, however, quickly expanded between its MIT confines and into some of the most remote corners of the world, alongside a few of its largest cities.

Unfortunately, Meraki’s equipment (understandably) isn’t free for newcomers outside of San Francisco. Instead, they’ve developed a number of hardware options for those wishing to create or expand the realm of free internet throughout the world. Aside from their indoor and outdoor varieties, Meraki is readying a solar model set to be launched (hopefully) within the next year.

Backed by Google and Sequoia Capital, Meraki is fast on-track to its goal of bringing the internet to “the next billion people.” With a lot of passion and a bit of help from its backers, Meraki is aiming to have all of San Francisco covered by the end of the year. Of course, while Meraki began as very much of a grassroots movement, some now claim that it’s losing the fire that it had on day one; with the removal of open-source options for the Meraki units’ software, network junkies have been quick to point out that the company seemingly isn’t what it used to be.

Still, their Free the Net campaign throughout San Francisco is enough to prove that they’ve got at least a little of what it takes to fuel their mission statement and truly bring the internet to the fingertips of the rest of the world.

If you look at the way a typical website runs, whether a social-network, a forum, or a shopping portal, most sites require you to register for an account to utilize everything that they have to offer. By now, if you’re anything like me, you have accounts on virtually every imaginable website on the web. On a daily basis you may login to two or three of those accounts and the rest you probably used once to try something out, place an order, or access a feature that was tagged as “members-only.”

Luckily, there is a cure around the corner. OpenID is an excellent attempt geared at fixing the currently broken system of accounts on the internet. Imagine a world in which you had one e-mail address, one username, and one password that served as your passport to the web - no more registering for accounts on sites to access their profiles, no more signing up just to place an order.

OpenID has been around for a while, but is only now just starting to gain enough momentum to be a truly useful service. MySpace, today, announced their support for the OpenID system and there are rumors cieculating that other major sites including Digg could be soon to follow.

The biggest problems facing OpenID at the moment are a combination of its relatively unknown status and the existence of competing products like Facebook Connect and Microsoft’s Live ID service. It’s an excellent technology that could, indeed, become the future of the web as we know it, but we may still be a ways off from seeing a widespread adoption of the OpenID protocol on more of the sites we tend to use.

A few years ago, what you were doing was essentially known only by yourself, your family, and your closest friends. A stranger in Dubai didn’t know you were on the way to Whole Foods to pick up something organic for dinner and he didn’t care. Today, there very well may be hundreds of people worldwide waiting to see what your next move of the day will be - that is, of course, assuming that you’re addicted to Twitter.

When I’d thought of creating a similar service to Twitter several years ago, I decided that people probably wouldn’t want everyone aware of where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing for every second of the day. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Today, the status service is up and running on virtually everything with a keyboard and, with the introduction of its recent iPhone counterparts, it shouldn’t be long before Twitter trumps its already high user count in excess of one million as of this writing.

Though most of the world isn’t yet addicted to Twitter, similar services like Loopt and Whrrl are adding GPS into the mix to deliver an even more in-depth look at what their users are up to. While the services present a number of pressing security concerns, they deliver something that is quickly changing the way that people live their lives. If you’re in a mall by yourself and suddenly the desire for Sushi strikes you, your phone can tell you which of your friends are nearby and in seconds you can be sitting with them face-to-face at the hottest Sushi bar in town.