Same thing (I think---it is not clear from the email I got) happened to the Anatomy class I signed up for. That at least had a date (March sometime; I forget) assigned to it. Sort of makes you wonder what is going on behind the curtains?
I also got the same email for the Machine Learning course. I think they're sending them out for all of the courses that were scheduled to start in January.
Based on some hiring e-mails I've seen it sounds like Daphne Koller and friends are trying to spin this off into a commercial venture (at least the means to offer such courses online). So it sounds like either a) they've gotten so much interest they're having trouble scaling (hard to believe) or b) they're held up trying to sort out ownership and terms of a partnership with Stanford.
Got the same email for ML and Model Thinking. You just got to wonder what's causing the hold up - lawyers, Stanford, system?
Useful post, thanks. I am also signed up for those two classes and was expecting them to start on Manday. That said, free is free, so I can be patient :-)
I suspect there's been an executive brain freeze, while they assess the impact of Apple's iTunes U or iText or whatever. Guys, it's a 1.0 Apple product. It won't make a difference until 2.0 next year, or 3.0 the year after. Apple's like Microsoft - they take 3 attempts to get anything right, but they limit the scope of 1.0 rather than making it suck.