I'm interested to see how successful these courses would be as you start moving out of programming related areas. ML, AI and DB would interest many programmers and has been a success but anatomy may not generate the same kind of interest. Kinda how the activity is high on stackoverflow but comparatively low on the other stackexchange sites.
MIT OCW requires a far higher level of intrinsic motivation. Stanford has almost nailed it. While online learning has taken Space out of the equation, Time, it seems, is still a big variable. Having people do the course at the same time with deadlines is working. They just need to work through the technical glitches, which shouldn't be that hard.
Carriers have different systems for group and individual insurance. And they have various constraints when they offer plans to groups. And that's what a typical carrier's underwriting system does. It would be interesting to see how this recommendation system would work with employer/group plans.
I used to practice meditation but have largely replaced it with Iyengar Yoga. I generally felt very good immediately after a session and I think it helped me in my productivity as well. However, I'm not so sure it helped me when I had to deal with high stress situations. The big problem that I have is when something becomes greater than just a hobby. For instance, when I did yoga for purely health reasons, I felt happier and better. But, when I started doing it with the thought of becoming as good as BKS Iyengar, yoga itself contributed to the stress.
The stock market indices are declining starting mid-2007 just as the unemployment index starts rising. But,the markets seem to be holding ok even though the unemployment queries have started increasing of late.
It is indeed hard to imagine business users doing complex computations on google spreadsheets. I fall back to excel in those scenarios but use google for simpler usecases.