Can you expand this critique? I'm a recent grad with the prerequisite knowledge they ask for (barely) and aspirations to build cool stuff. Is my time better spent elsewhere? If so, where?

If the cool stuff you want to build includes things like alternative energy sources (solar, wind, wave, and so on) then 90% of the course will be of little benefit to you. However, if your definition of cool stuff can be boiled down to "software on the internet" then this course will likely be helpful.

I actually disagree a bit here -- Balaji and Vijay (the instructors) have both built incredibly successful companies based on many of the principles that they teach in the course. Sure, the online course won't teach you to do genomics or protein folding or build solar panels, but what it will do is allow you to create many of the components that support businesses like those. Thinking in a broader sense about what APIs for various business functions can do and how they can help you can be a tremendous help and this class can teach you how to build those APIs.

They will teach you how to make many amazing startups such as Foursquare for dogs!

There's a website that will help with that: http://itsthisforthat.com

import json, requests, csv

def startup(n):

    url = 'http://itsthisforthat.com/api.php?json'
    c = 0

    while c < n:
        data = requests.get(url=url)
        binary = data.content
        output = json.loads(binary)
        row = "It's a " + output['this'] + " for " + output['that'] +"!"
        print row
        c += 1

startup(100)