This week marks the one-year anniversary of TEDTalks — a year ago this Wednesday, our first five talks went live on TED.com. Since that time, more than 5 million people have seen a TEDTalk, either via TED.com, on this blog, through our video partners such as Google Video and YouTube — or through re-posting on […]
NYTimes tech columnist and TED06 speaker David Pogue has been testing the Apple iPhone, which will hit stores tomorrow Friday in the US, and he shows it all on video, feature by feature, dressed with classic Pogue fun. Or you can read his article. Summary: “much of the hype and some of the criticisms are […]
Bill Stone, the maverick cave explorer and diver — who has invented robots and rebreathing equipment to let him plumb Earth’s deepest abysses — talks about his efforts to build a robot to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa. The plan is to send the droid to bore through miles of ice and swim through a liquid […]
In a follow-up to his now-legendary TED2006 presentation, Hans Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software — which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats. (Just days after this […]
In an extended run at the Film Forum in New York City (and now playing in Philadelphia), the film Manufactured Landscapes is in the spirit of Edward Burtynsky’s 2005 TED Prize wishes: to show the world the size, the devastation, the sheer astonishingness of the industrial landscapes we have created — and to create a […]
William Kamkwamba, the 19-year-old self-taught engineer who built a windmill power system for his family’s home in Malawi, was a star of TEDGlobal 2007. As reported by Ethan Zuckerman, several TEDsters have pledged to help him further his education. Now you can follow William’s journey on his blog. Read about the windmill he built, his […]
Stephen Lawler, from Microsoft, takes us on a tour through the company’s new Virtual Earth project, which is, basically, an attempt to turn the entire planet into an interface to the web. Collecting and synthesizing massive amounts of data — bird’s-eye views, street-level photos, 3D wireframes — the Virtual Earth team are building a world […]
Ethel is, perhaps, the first 21st-century realization of the classical string quartet. An all-star foursome, Ethel is Cornelius Dufallo (violin), Ralph Farris (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello), and Mary Rowell (violin), a mixed bag of players from classical, rock and downtown new-music circles. On TED.com, they perform the third movement from Phil Kline’s four-part suite “The […]
TED partner Google has allowed for the first time a journalist (Saul Hansell from the NYT) to spend a day with engineer Amit Shingal and his "search-quality team" — the people responsible for the very secret mathematical formulas that decide which web pages best answer each user’s query. It’s a delicate act, a mix of […]
TED Curator Chris Anderson writes: If there had been no other outcome of TEDGlobal than the story below, I think the whole thing would have been worthwhile. This hit my inbox today… It’s from Yene Assegid, the founder of a development organization in Sierra Leone called Integral Africa. She was part of the Fellows program […]
Watch here a new "taste of TED" video documentary shot at this year’s conference, in March. In 7 minutes it gives a great sense of the atmosphere at TED and of the content of the conference. It is also available elsewhere on this site, and you can download it here (158 Mb). Another documentary about […]
Strategic planner Thomas P.M. Barnett has advised US leaders on national security since the end of the Cold War. In this bracingly honest — and very funny — talk, Barnett outlines a solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two. One half makes war, and the other half builds the peace that follows. […]
TED’s Media Production Specialist, Michael Glass, is in Toronto this week premiering his film “Little Gold Men” at the Worldwide Short Film Festival — in a program called “Laughing at Americans.” Check out a clip >>
TED’s Content Producer, Kelly Stoetzel, helps choose the speakers for every TED conference. She shares her thoughts after TEDGlobal 2007 — on the conference buzz, the connections and the small moments between the sessions: I observed so many connections and conversations at the conference that felt like they were changing lives. Like William Kamkwamba, the […]
Architect David Rockwell loves to create drama and spectacle, in his designs for casino interiors, hotels, restaurants, movie and theater sets, and even a playground. Shortly after 9/11, he collaborated with other designers and architects to create a temporary viewing platform overlooking Ground Zero in New York. Here, in conversation with Kurt Andersen, Rockwell talks […]
After a security breach crashed his two crucial blogs, AfriGadget and White African, on Thursday morning, blogger Erik Hersman lost his voice for the conclusion of TEDGlobal. But now he’s back up, and we’re catching up with him: From “Finally! A Mobile Payment System for Africa!“: Yesterday’s talk by Herman Chinery-Hesse was one of the […]