At a press conference this morning, Google announced that its New York headquarters in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan will provide free Wi-Fi to residents in the area. The company partnered with the city government and a nonprofit, the Chelsea Improvement Company, to make it possible.

It’s no Google Fiber, but both Google and the city are hoping the free Wi-Fi attracts a number of small businesses and entrepreneurs to the area to set up shop. Google’s friendliness towards entrepreneurs may also help stimulate even more growth in the area as New York, like other cities across the nation, works to grow its tech sector.

Speaking at the event, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that “New York is destined to become the world’s leading digital city, and universal access to high-speed Internet is one of the core building blocks of that vision.”

Google is doing its part for one of the many neighborhoods in New York City, but other parts of the city will obviously be left out. The speculation of a Google Fiber launch may have been premature, but New York City could take a cue from Chattanooga or Seattle and offer cheap fiber Internet to its citizens. It’s already proving to attract plenty of talent in Kansas City. If Bloomberg really wants to make New York a “leading digital city,” he’ll have to either push the city or stingy ISPs to start providing decent Internet.

[h/t: The Hill]

The game is DRM-free and intended to promote the 25th anniversary of both Street Fighter and Mega Man. Street Fighter‘s anniversary was this year, and Mega Man‘s anniversary year has just begun.

The game features Mega Man battling his way across levels and fighting Street Fighters such as Ryu, Blanka, Dhalsim, and Chun Li in lieu of Robot Master bosses.

Meanwhile, Capcom has released a video showcasing just how Street Fighter X Mega Man came to be. It began as a fan-made project by a man named Seow Zong Hui, who showed off his work to Capcom execs at an event booth. When those same execs realized the game could be used to promote the cross-over anniversaries of the two classic Capcom franchises, they helped Hui polish it up in time for a release on December 17.

Today is 25 years to the day of the release of the original Mega Man for the NES.

The publisher announced this week that Street Fighter X Mega Man will be released on December 17. What’s more, the game will be free to download for the PC.

The 8-bit title will see players take on the role of Mega Man as he battles Street Fighter characters in lieu of the Robot Masters. Ryu, Blanka, Dhalsim, Chun Li, and other fighters will stand in the blue guy’s way. Mega Man will be able to take the powers of the fighters as he beats them.

A trailer for the game has also been released. Despite the fact that the concept of the game is silly, it actually looks very fun. Its classic Mega Man side-scrolling gameplay should induce nostalgia that reminds gamers why these franchises are still producing sequels after all these years.

Crackle’s Director of Partner Marketing, Samuel Notowitz, would like to remind you that the Crackle Web app is available on Google TV. The service features a selection of movies and television shows that are switched out on a monthly basis. It may lack the variety of Netflix or Hulu, but it makes up for it by being completely free.

Notowitz says that viewers this month can watch comedy classics like Pineapple Express or Snatch. The latter is especially fantastic if you’re into British comedy. Crackle gets 10 episodes of Seinfeld a month for your viewing pleasure. The service also features over 60 anime titles from Animax which they say contains over 1,000 episodes. With only 60 series making up that many episodes, it’s a good bet that long running series like Bleach and Naruto make up the majority of it.

Crackle is now available in the Spotlight section on Google TV. I recommend that you check out Snatch this weekend if you missed it the first time around. It’s one of the best comedies to come out of the last decade. I’m also willing to bet that it’s one of Brad Pitt’s best performances.

If you don’t have a Google TV, Crackle is available in your Web browser just like every other movie streaming service. You can check it out at their official Web site.

But there are plenty of catches. Customers will be required to purchase a $50 antenna or a $100 mobile hotspot to plug into their laptop. The free accounts are limited to 200 MB per month, not much in this day and age. It’s fine if you only plan to read e-mails and surf the web, just don’t plan on watching too many videos. And the service only lasts a year.

When the monthly data allotment or the one year time limit is exhausted, customers have the option of continuing for a modest price hike of $9.95… Now it’s starting to make sense.

NetZero is planning to use the free service to draw people into their paid program, and the kicker is once you opt into the paid version there is no going back.

The $9.95 plan gives you 300 more megabytes, or you can go for broke with the $50 plan, giving you 4 gigabytes. Similar programs are offer by Verizon and AT&T. Verizon charges about $50 for 1 gigabyte.

Though there is a catch with this as well. United Online doesn’t have its own wireless broadband service. They have to piggyback on Clearwire Corp.’s network. You may know them as the providers of “Sprint 4G” service.

And there’s more. Clearwire’s broadband technology has been bypassed by the industry at large, making device compatibility an issue. The reason is that the frequency it uses has difficulty traveling through buildings. Sprint bypasses this by using a fallback option when signal strength is low. NetZero doesn’t have that option. What’s more, Clearwire is no longer expanding this service, choosing to invest its money in 4G LTE.

So if you don’t mind using an already outdated service, never using your computer inside, purchasing $50 worth of equipment for a “free” service, and only having enough data to read e-mails, this service is for you. I will be paying a little extra for full service.

Bloomberg is reporting that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will begin offering a free online course today that anybody can take. Students around the world can take the class and upon completion will receive a certificate signifying their accomplishment.

The class titled “6.002x: Circuits and Electronics” is the first free course offered by the school and will begin March 5. The course will focus on the inner-workings of smartphones and other “cool gadgets” according to Anart Agarwal, the lead instructor for the course. Subsequent classes will be offered with a small fee.

This isn’t the first time that MIT has dabbled in free education and materials for aspiring students. For the past 10 years, the school has provided documents and lecture notes online through its OpenCourseWare program. It’s new MITx initiative will have non-MIT students’ performance assessed and be rewarded certificates if they show mastery in the subject.

“Anybody anywhere that has the time, motivation, drive to learn this kind of material should be given the opportunity to do so,” MIT Provost L. Rafael Reif said. The new program will feature more interactive features than the current OpenCourseWare does.

Students will receive video lectures, midterms and final exams, weekly deadlines to complete homework and labs, and access to a discussion forum. The school said that students can expect to spend about 10 hours a week on the course.

Enrollment in the first course in unlimited, but the college isn’t sure how many students will apply for the program. They do require that students interested in the “introductory course” have a background in advanced physics and mathematics.

For those interested in free education, you can sign up here.

As part of a new service, Moo, an award-winning online print business that customizes business cards and postcards, is letting Facebookers take their Timeline offline with Facebook Cards. The concept incorporates images from your Facebook Timeline that you can couple with choice quotes and statements in order to create fun business cards you can hand out to people. From their press release that they shared with WebProNews:

Each of the cards, designed and personalized by each individual, can feature a different photo image on the front of the cards together with a favorite quote or saying on the reverse. Instead of every business card having the same look and feel, with MOO.COM’s Printfinity feature people can pair just the right images for the right business or social occasions.

The integration will give Facebook users the ability to leverage the content they’re adding to their Timelines for their own Facebook Card. People will now be able to take snapshots of their lives from their Timelines and bring them into their offline social and business networking experience with the Facebook Card.

I spoke with a representative from Moo’s PR firm who assured me that you don’t have to actually use these for any specific business purposes, either – anyone can sign up for the cards, so you don’t have to be a professional to have rad business cards. Give’em to friends. Put’em on the windshield wipers of cars in your apartment’s parking lot to introduce yourself to your neighbors. Slip one to your bartender (it sure beats the hell out of the dopey practice of leaving your scribbled phone number on your receipt). Need an intro for that story you love to tell about how you fell off a boat in Patagonia last spring? Introduce the tale with a card created from your Timeline about the event. Show off your science however you please.

Pretty fun stuff, really. But here’s the best part: starting today at 12PM EST, Moo is giving away bundles of 50 Facebook Cards for free to the first 200,000 people to sign up for the service. One small detail to note, though: you will have to have the Timeline enabled on your Facebook account to create your cards; otherwise, you’ll be prompted to head back to the Facebook page to make the switch.

But even if you miss the promotion, the Facebook Cards will remain available to everyone on Moo’s website only then you’ll have to pay for them like normal people.

Think of these cards as the old school method of friend requests when you actually had to approach somebody in person and talk to them while sharing information about yourself. Facebook Cards consolidate a little of bit of that awkward exchange by giving you a fun way to offer up some of your info. As a sample, here’s what mine looks like.

The front:

And the back:

Once you’re ready to start designing your Facebook Cards, you can customize your name (if you should want to) and add a brief statement along with your website. On the flip side of the Facebook Cards, you can customize quotes as well as include your phone number and email address (a link to your Facebook profile is already included in the info). So head on over to Moo’s page to start fixing up your Facebook Cards before the freebies are gone.

Last December, Google offered military families free $10 international call credits with the goal of helping soldiers stay in touch with their families as they were deployed around the world. Shortly thereafter, Google decided to just offer free calls from Gmail for the U.S. and Canada.

Now, a year later, Google announced that this will continue. In a post on the Gmail Blog, the company says:

As the holiday season approaches, we’re happy to announce that we’ve extended free domestic calls within the US and Canada for 2012.

This is our way of helping you connect with friends and family across the country. And you can still call the rest of the world from Gmail at our insanely low rates.

No word on other countries.

Do you ever use Gmail to make calls? Let us know in the comments.

Leading up to the reading, you could see that Knox was anxiously awaiting the official word from the jury. You saw her breathing quite heavily and bring her hands up to her face several times. At one point her lawyer leaned in and was talking with Knox, it looked as though she could be sick at any moment.

Below are some powerful images from the verdict reading:

AT&T has issued a press release, announcing the news. Starting from March 11th, and ending on March 31st, calls and texts from the US to Japan are on the house. Here are a few details from the announcement:

- Text messages to Japan, which originate from a US wireless number are free.

- Wireless customers will receive free international long distance on calls made from US and Puerto Rico to Japan.

- Wireline customers will be comped for 60 minutes of call time. Though it states in the release that users will have to call AT&T to receive credit for the minutes.

The free call time will either show up as no charges, or as credit applied towards the call.

Mark Collins, senior vice president, Voice and Data Products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said this of the initiative, “We want to help our customers connect with loved ones in Japan in anyway we can” he continues, “Connecting with family and friends is most important at times like this- we want to make it as easy and worry free as possible for our customers.”

Updated: Verizon has just tweeted their plans to allow free calling to Japan as well.

Time Warner Cable has joined the list of telecommunication companies to allow free calls and texts to Japan. They’re also a part of a group of carriers which are providing free access to Japan TV as well.