UNext ENTERS ONLINE GRADUATE COURSE FIELD - UNext.com has struck deals with the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Along with Columbia University's business school, the first school that signed on, each school plans to help UNext.com create course materials that it can sell to major corporations for employee training and education.

International Business Machines Corp. was the first company to sign up as a customer of what UNext.com describes as an "online business-education community called Cardean" - named for a Roman goddess - that will allow employees to take courses electronically on their own schedule, from work or home or even while traveling. The courses will be delivered through a product created by IBM's Lotus Development unit called LearningSpace, and Lotus's sales force will sell the educational materials to its corporate customers around the world. The web site is: http://www.unext.com (TechLearn Trends, #131, 14 June 99)

MORE ON Unext - Ultimately, UNext.com wants to gain accreditation as an online business school with the authority to grant MBA degrees. UNext.com will compete with Caliber Learning Network, a company with similar goals that has already signed up the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Johns Hopkins University. IBM is UNext.com's first Cardean online business education customer. As a Cardean customer, employees will be able to take courses online from remote locations. The courses will be delivered to employees using Lotus' LearningSpace. (Wall Street Journal 06/23/99 - Edupage 23 June 99)

WEB STORAGE SITES LOOM AS NEXT BIG THING - A number of Internet companies are offering online file storage to attract users who may want to access their files from any networked computer. Although Apple first declared the floppy disk drive to be obsolete by excluding it from its iMac, it took the innovation of a number of companies, such as NetFloppy.com, My Docs Online, and Visto to offer an alternative to floppy drives. Most of these companies provide free storage of 15 MB to 20 MB of data that can be accessed through the Internet. Although Web-based file storage has yet to achieve notable success, the companies cite the popularity of free e-mail and online calendaring services as a sign that the service will catch on. My Docs Online has used its file-sharing feature to attract customers; as current customers post files, those who access the files instantly learn about the service. My Docs has attracted 40,000 registered users in over 40 countries since its launch in March. (C|Net 06/24/99 - Edupage 25 June 99)