TEDBlog February, 2010 Archive
11 February 2010
TEDActive Blogger's Alley
TEDActive Blogger’s Alley in the Bing Innovation Lounge. In the photo: TED’s Kristin Windbigler, Shanna Carpenter and Matthew Trost, and TED speaker Jim Fallon.
(Photo: TED / Michael Brands)
11 February 2010
Maybe a new street sign is what the world needs now
What’s the best way to keep automobile traffic moving calmly and rationally through an intersection? It’s not a stoplight, it’s not a stop sign, and it’s not a yield sign (who knows what to do at a yield?).
In Session 6, Gary Lauder suggests we “Take Turns.”
Roundabouts are the best way to build intersections, he notes, but where those are not practical, instead of a ring of stop signs, some of those signs should be replaced with a new kind of sign that can save millions of dollars PER SIGN.
Here’s the street sign the world needs now. Half a stop and half a yield, the sign gives each driver a clear indication of how to behave. Below the red “Take Turns” shield is a small sign reading, “If Cars Are Waiting, Please Stop and Alternate.” And if there are no cars waiting, just blow on through. (No more stopping at red lights at 4am, on a country road, when there’s no one around for miles.)
Lauder has registered the sign with a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license — so share it freely (just credit him, don’t modify the sign, and don’t sell it). And imagine a world where every street sign contains the word “Please.”
11 February 2010
Demo: Where to get Pivot
11 February 2010
Photoblog: The Global Village social space
Above, TED Senior Fellow Juliana Machado Ferreira watches TED in simulcast at the Global Village, a social space dedicated to the TED Fellows program. Supported by the Kauffman Foundation, the Global Village sports comfy cushion seating (below) and a touchscreen (bottom) for pinpointing the home countries of the TED Fellows and Senior Fellows at Long Beach.
Photos: TED / Marla Aufmuth
11 February 2010
Teach every child about food: Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish, now on TED.com
Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., 2010 TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 21:53)
Watch Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks.
11 February 2010
Photoblog: The Intersection social space and Palm Springs chats
Above, a crowd at Palm Springs — including TED’s manager of translation, Kristin Windbigler, at left — chats via AT&T’s HD teleconferencing with TED’s own Leigh Ferreira in Long Beach (seen onscreen wearing a hot pink scarf from TEDIndia…). During the course of TED2010, Leigh led half a dozen chats between Long Beach and Palm Springs, bringing mainstage TED speakers over to the HD teleconferencing area at the Intersection to talk with TEDActivists. This AT&T-supported social space also offered a useful Internet Cafe featuring Dell (RED) laptops, for those who honored TED’s suggestion to leave their own laptops back in their hotel rooms. Below is the HD teleconferencing setup on the Long Beach side:
11 February 2010
TEDActive gets a buzz from "slow" coffee
We visited the Intelligentsia Slow Coffee Bar in Bing’s Innovation Lounge to learn what slow coffee is, and hear about the simple approach that brews a perfect cup.
“‘Slow coffee’ is an attempt to tackle the notion of quantity and convenience as what defines good coffee. We think the quality of the cup is the most important thing. … We’re trying to elevate coffee to its overdue culinary status. Specialty beer and wine are kind of out there in the public; what coffee gives us is, in your hands you have the opportunity to interpret through many different brew methods: the siphon, Chemex. … Depending on what you like, you can articulate that differently: body, heft, mouthfeel. You don’t have the same level of control or personal choice in other specialty products.” — Stephen Morrissey
“These gizmos are all intriguing to look at, but they’re just ways to marry coffee and water. Ultimately, these guys are pouring water over coffee, but they’re doing it with care. We’re doing our best to reveal the potential in the raw product. When the cherry is harvested from the tree, it has the highest level of potential that it will ever have. And every step that happens along the way only decreases that. The human element doesn’t add anything — it only reveals the coffee. We can only make it worse. So with every hand that touches the coffee, it’s important that it’s done with the utmost care.” — Kyle Glanville
(Photos: TED / Michael Brands)
11 February 2010
Invention: Roundup of TED2010 Session 6
OMG, the LXD. Many more photos here >>
Jane McGonigal: “An entire generation of young people are virtuoso gamers. We need to figure out exactly what skills they’re honing.”
David Byrne: “Like the birds, our joy is always there. We just change it to fit the context.”
Jake Shimabukuro jamming with Ethel.
Blaise Aguera y Arcas demoed augmented reality based on Seadragon. From @Scobleizer Microsoft just blew our minds by putting live video and Worldwide telescope together on maps. Wow. #TED
Welcoming the TED Fellows and TED Senior Fellows!
To fight malaria, Nathan Myhrvold zaps mosquitos with a green laser. As he says: “We invent for fun, profit and humanity.”
11 February 2010
Photoblog: The LXD in rehearsal
An amazing shot by TED photographer James Duncan Davidson of the LXD‘s evening rehearsal on Tuesday. (The LXD’s jawdropping show opened Session 6, going on now.)
Photo: TED / James Duncan Davidson
