Watch Theo Jemison’s video of artist Kiel Johnson’s installation “Everyone’s an Architect” at TEDActive 2012. See how the project grows throughout the week, with dozens of collaborators stopping by or spending long hours to help build Johnson’s charming cardboard city — lit up with LEDs powered by human foot traffic and a hand-cranked generator. Music by Daedelusmusic.com.

In the new issue of Fast Company, Anya Kamenetz calls TED “the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years.” As she writes in the story titled “How TED Connects the Idea-Hungry Elite”: “The instant popularity of TED talks might say something … promising about both our collective consciousness and our collective attention span.”

In a video accompanying the story, Kamenetz reveals the secret of why TEDTalks are 18 minutes long — and shares 7 tips for giving your own TEDTalk. See the video on FastCompany.com or on iTunes.

Tonight, we’re thrilled to announce TED’s newest initative in sharing great ideas with the world: the Open TV Project. Announced this evening at Web 2.0 in San Francisco, the TED Open TV Project will bring TEDTalks to broadcast TV networks around the globe.

The TED Open TV Project has already signed up dozens of broadcasters around the world, whose collective audience numbers in the hundreds of millions. Built in response to strong demand from TV station managers around the world, TED’s Open TV Project allows broadcasters to air TEDTalks for free, and encourages them to create custom programs for their communities.

“Since we first launched TEDTalks, our goal has been to distribute on all available video platforms; anywhere people watch video, we want them to watch TEDTalks. And the fact is, people everywhere still watch an awful lot of TV,” says June Cohen, Executive Producer of Media for TED. “In particular, TV is a very effective way to reach the developing world, where low internet penetration and slow connections make online video impractical. But most important, the TED Open TV Project continues TED’s guiding philosophy of radical openness.”

Find a TV station that shows TEDTalks >>

Find out more about broadcasting TEDTalks on your TV station >>

In the past year, smartphones have emerged as a major platform for watching video and web content. And while TEDTalks have always been viewable on the phone itself (via our iTunes podcast or independently created iPhone, Windows Mobile and Android apps), we saw a demand to view our website through the phone browser.

For this reason, we’re thrilled to announce that TED.com now supports the HTML5 open standard and the H.264 codec. What it means for you: if you own an iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad — or any smartphone that supports the open HTML5 standard — you can watch TEDTalks right in your browser, and also make comments and rate the talks (though you won’t yet have access to our subtitles). And when you access TED.com from your computer, you’ll still get the same feature-rich playback experience — using the Flash platform — that you always have.

This is just the latest step in evolving TED to reach new audiences and platforms. In a few weeks time, we’ll unveil an application for the iPad, which will create a unique stand-alone viewing experience. We’re also at work on initiatives to reach other platforms, including Symbian, in the next year. Would you like to see TED on a particular platform? Let us know …

After the jump, read the FAQ on HTML5 / H.264 >>Q. What is the big change?
A. Previously, TEDTalks videos on TED.com were only delivered using the Flash platform. Since Flash is not generally available on mobile devices, you could not watch our videos on TED.com through your phone browser. So we modified our site, and now use an HTML5 video player — showing video encoded to the H.264 codec — to deliver video to the majority of mobile devices accessing TED.com. What it means is: Now, on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad running iPhone OS 3.0 or later, you can watch videos on TED.com, using the phone’s web browser. Since Android devices do not yet support HTML5 video in the browser, the experience is slightly different. You will need to click to view in the native video player.

Q. What is HTML5 video? What is H.264?
A. HTML5 video is a new open-source markup language standard that helps content providers deliver rich media on the browser without an external plug-in. Read more about it here. Although HTML5 video is a fairly new technology, adoption is growing rapidly, and we believe it is a great solution for the mobile space. For TED.com, we recognize that we need to be reaching out to our audience on mobile platforms, and HTML5 video was the perfect solution to move forward with. It is quite exciting.

H.264 is a video compression standard frequently used in Blu-ray, television and real-time video conferencing, as well as web video. Read more about it here.

Q. Do you plan on replacing all TEDTalks with HTML5 video / H.264?
A. We have no plans to move away from Flash. This new feature was created to broaden our video distribution reach to areas where Flash isn’t supported. TED fans on platforms that support Flash will still get our feature-rich playback experience using the Flash platform. That said, we are planning to move to the H.264 codec for all our videos – whether they’re delivered via Flash or HTML5 video.

Q. Why start with the iPhone when there are already two community-created iPhone applications?
A. The application experience and the browser experience are complimentary. Some people like using an app, like those from the TED fans at VenueM and MotherApp, while others prefer using the browser.

Q. Will this work on the iPad? What about iPod Touch?
A. Yes and yes. As long as you have iPhone OS 3.0 or later, you should be able to watch our videos on these devices.

Q. Only Apple and Android devices are mentioned. What about the others?
A. These two kinds of devices cover more than 90 percent of our mobile traffic. If a new device comes on the market that supports HTML5 video / H.264, our video should just work.

Q. Do you plan to support TEDTalks on all mobile devices?
A. We think HTML5 video/H.264 is the right combination for mobile. As more devices support these technologies, support will be gained automatically.

Q. Why HTML5 — why not Ogg Theora?
A. We’d love to support open formats such as Ogg video/Theora, but few mobile devices support the Theora codec. We’ll continue to monitor support for different codecs, but for now, H.264 has broad support in the mobile space.

Q. My smartphone supports HTML5 video but I can’t see the video — what’s up with that?
A. There are a couple of possible reasons. We are looking for people to help us on this front. If you have a smartphone that supports HTML5 video / H.264 and know your way around mobile video, send email to contact@ted.com, subject line HTML5. We would love to get help from the TED community to catalog the experience.

Cast: Audience at TED’s Saturday-morning panel “How to Create a Viral Video.” Hands: Damian Kulash from OK Go. (Proof.) Camera: TED’s Jason Wishnow. Inspiration: Surprised Kitty and her 21 million views on YouTube.

(If you’re at SXSWi, come to TED’s Sunday-morning panel: “Offering Your Content in 100 Languages” at 9:30am to learn how our dedicated band of volunteer translators has opened TEDTalks to a global audience; panelists from Global Voices and Mozilla will talk about their own massively user-sourced translation efforts.)

TEDTalks from the Time 100′s “Builders & Titans” list: The Twitter Guys … Indian software executive and visionary Nandan Nilekani (he spoke at TED2009; watch for his TEDTalk online very soon) … and Zipcar visionary Robin Chase.

TEDTalks from the Time 100′s “Artists & Entertainers” list: architect partners Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio … the astonishing young conductor and El Sistema prodigy Gustavo Dudamel

TEDTalks from the Time 100′s “Heroes & Icons” list: pastor Rick Warren … Amazon head Jeff Bezos

TEDTalks from the Time 100′s “Scientists & Thinkers” list: energy expert Amory Lovins … Dan Barber … Shai Agassi … Nate Silver

See more archive unboxing photos on flickr >>