20 January 2009

Photosynth + Multitouch = an astonishing look at the oath of office

Photosynth on Multitouch, uploaded by TED Conference.

On CNN's Inauguration Day coverage today: a massive Photosynth of the precise moment that President Barack Obama took the oath of office. In the image above, an anchor sifts through individual images on a Multitouch screen. We're proud because both these technologies -- Photosynth and the Multitouch screen -- were demo'd first at TED.

Watch Jeff Han demo his Multitouch screen at TED2006 >>

Watch Blaise Aguera y Arcas demo Seadragon/Photosynth at TED2007 >>

(And yes, you can view this Photosynth on a Mac. Click on the link to CNN's The Moment, and follow the instructions to download Silverlight for your Mac or freeware box.)

Photo: William Allen

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26 October 2008

Johnny Lee on the power of video demos

In today's New York Times, Johnny Lee talks about his clever Wii hacks -- and how he shared them with the world via viral video. Johnny Lee's TEDTalk, in which he shows how to make an interactive whiteboard from a $40 game controller, is a perpetual Top 10 talk on TED.com. Lee's amazing YouTube videos and his TEDTalk have helped to spread this cheap-but-effective educational tool around the world. From the story:

Some 700,000 people, many of them teachers, have downloaded the software, Mr. Lee says. Much more expensive whiteboards may offer more features and better image resolution, but Mr. Lee’s version is adequate for most classroom applications.

For more video demos from TED, check out:

Hod Lipson's "self-aware" robots >>
Dean Kamen's moving demo of a robotic arm >>
Blaise Aguera y Arcas' demo of Seadragon and Photosynth >>

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21 August 2008

Photosynth goes live!

Remember Blaise Aguera y Arcas' dazzling demo of Photosynth (one of the Top 10 TEDTalks of all time)? The software has been released this week by Microsoft Live Labs, and it's as much fun to play with as it was to watch.

If you run Windows, go play with Photosynth >>

UPDATE: Or use Photosynth to solve crime like they do on CSI:New York >>

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink

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26 June 2008

Counting down the Top 10 TEDTalks

With 50 million views since we debuted online two years ago, TED talks have become a powerful cultural force.

To celebrate this milestone, we're releasing a never-before-seen list: the Top 10 TED talks of all time, as of June 2008.

With speakers like neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and global health expert Hans Rosling, the list proves one of the compelling ideas behind TEDTalks: that an unknown speaker with a powerful idea can reach -- and move -- a global audience. Links to all 10 talks are found below -- or browse through our Top 10 TED Talks Theme. Even if you've seen all the talks, the highlights video is darn fun.

Download the Top 10 TED Talks highlights video:
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Download the Top 10 TED Talks highlights video:
Video to iTunes (MP4)
Video to desktop (Zipped MP4)
Hi-def video (480p)

Top 10 TED Talks of all time
1. Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
2. Jeff Han: Touchscreen demo foreshadows the iPhone
3. David Gallo: Underwater astonishments
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo
5. Arthur Benjamin: Lightning calculation and other "Mathemagic"
6. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
7. Hans Rosling: The best stats you've ever seen
8. Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better
9. Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis
10. Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote

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30 January 2008

We're made for zooming

It its newest issue, Newsweek publishes a detailed story on Microsoft's Seadragon technology and the man behind it, Blaise Aguera y Arcas (who premiered it at TED07 last March, watch his speech), and discusses what it calls the "zoom interface":

The Internet, it seems, doesn't take advantage of how humans best process information. Evolution granted Homo Sapiens a high degree of visual acuity ... Scrolling and linking are inferior modes of taking in information. "Humans are incredibly good at spatial navigation and incredibly bad at navigating through a list of generic icons or generic text." ... These limitations are not lost on the technology giants and forward-thinking entrepreneurs working to commercialize a new way to take in information visually: the zoom interface. In its simplest form, it displays information all at once - all the photos in an album, say, or all the files on a PC, or all the entries in a database, or all the items retrieved in a search - and when you spot something of interest, you zoom down into it. In this way, zooming represents an upgrade from the second- and third-best methods for accessing information (scrolling and linking) to the best option: displaying information like a landscape, and giving people the chance to zoom down to the details ... Only recently have engineers had the advances in display technology, broadband connections and video processors capable of coping with a zoom interface. As a result, prototype zoom interfaces are now up and running in labs around the world.

And are arriving on the market. Think of Google Earth's zooming capabilities, of the iPhone, of Jeff Han's PerceptivePixel multi-touch wall (watch his speech at TED06), of Zumobi's zooming interface for cell phones, and many others.

Read the full Newsweek story.

Posted by Bruno Giussani | Permalink

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30 May 2007

Three powerful talks from TED2007

This week we're posting three of the most-talked-about talks from TED2007 -- Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, John Doerr and Blaise Aguera y Arcas' remarkable demo of Seadragon/Microsoft Photosynth.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Finance Minister for Nigeria (and the first woman to hold that job), argues for investment -- rather than aid -- as the means to help Africa. Okonjo-Iweala will also speak at next week's TEDGlobal conference in Arusha, Tanzania. John Doerr, legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist, has turned his investment focus from high tech to greentech -- because his daughter asked him to. Blaise Aguera y Arcas, software architect for Microsoft and architect of Seadragon, put Microsoft's jaw-dropping Photosynth software through its paces in a demo that had TED2007 abuzz. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA.)

NEW: Read the transcripts >>

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