Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti. This morning the people of Port au Prince woke up to portraits of their own – locals and members of the Haitian diaspora – plastered around the city. From Cité Soleil to Petion-Ville, over 500 images, taken by Haitian photographers and printed by JR’s […]
First announced at TEDxOilSpill last spring, during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge was a $1.4 million competition to goose development of new technology to clean oil off the surface of seawater. This week, the X Foundation announced a winner and runner-up. As reported […]
Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, died yesterday, September 25, at the age of 71. A former member of the Kenyan parliament, Maathai combined not only peaceful community-based activism and forest-conservation efforts, but also government transparency and women’s rights, all in one game-changing project called the Green Belt Movement, […]
Psychologist Paul Bloom, author of How Pleasure Works, studies the nature of pleasure. At TED Global he gave a witty and riveting talk on how knowing the history of an object (or a relationship with a person) can profoundly affect our enjoyment of it or them. After the conference, TED’s Ben Lillie caught up with him to talk […]
Since he was 11 years old, Apurv Mishra has been accelerating change. Inventor of the Glabenator, a device that helps paralysis victims communicate, Apurv is dedicated to helping pioneers connect and work more efficiently. Today, Apurv is thrilled to launch Future.ly, a platform that maps the state of innovation across the world. Interactive Fellows Friday […]
At age 17, Ben Gulak invented an electric motorcycle that was named “Invention of the Year” by Popular Science. He’s now working on a snowmobile-ATV hybrid. Though being a full-time student and running two businesses has meant a lot of sacrifices — including his favorite TV show “Dexter” — Ben says the rewards are well […]
This week, Judy Bonds — whose work and life Majora Carter describes movingly in her latest TEDTalk — died after a battle with cancer. Bonds founded Coal River Mountain Watch, which fought coal companies that were strip-mining her home county, and proposed a thrilling alternative: wind power. She won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2003 […]
There’s a worrying trend in online advertising. Many sites are reporting falling click-through rates — and marketers are responding by resorting to ever more aggressive ways of ambushing your attention. We’re launching an initiative to find a better way! TED’s mission is “ideas worth spreading.” You, our audience, are expert at identifying the things that […]
Unconventional astronomer Garki Israelian is known to TEDsters for his talk at TEDGlobal 2009 on studying the spectrum emitted by stars. Now Israelian is inviting anyone with an interest in astronomy and the space sciences to travel to the Canary Islands, in Spain, home of the world’s largest telescope, to participate on June 20-25, 2011 […]
Bristol Baughan is a producer of award-winning films — including a documentary that received an Academy Award nomination — and a co-founder of Good Magazine. Now experimenting with concepts like “commercials for ideas,” and “personal producing,” Bristol is discovering new ways of seeing herself and her work. Dedicated to finding lasting solutions for complex social […]
From Wall Street to Grameen Bank, the experiences of Durreen Shahnaz’s life are coming together to propel her next project: a stock exchange for socially conscious companies. What are the most important projects you’re involved with? I am creating two companies. My first company is Impact Investment Exchange, which is a trading platform. It’s a […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaFY760OasE&hl=en_US&fs=1] Being announced right now in Washington, DC: A brand-new X Challenge to combat oil spills. The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge is a $1.4 million prize to promote development of new technologies and techniques to capture spilled oil. As Peter Diamandis said at the announcement: “We are not rewarding someone for existing technology. […]
By the end of Mission Blue Voyage, most of the attendees and speakers were sporting cool glass necklaces, a gift from Dianna Cohen, second from left, and the Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC). (From left, above, you can see filmmaker Mike deGruy, Dianna Cohen, speaker John Delaney, and the legendary Sylvia Earle, all wearing their glass […]
The TED Blog caught up with Bjarke Ingels several weeks after he gave his TEDTalk at TEDGlobal 2009. How have the reactions been to your talk? Well, in the comments on the website, there’s been a lot of meticulous debate about whether or not you can actually see the Great Wall of China from the […]
The TED Blog caught up with ad man Rory Sutherland the evening before we posted his TEDTalk. Drawing on the work of behavioral economists, Nobel Prize winners and others, he talked at length about his personal philosophy of Advertarianism, about President Obama and the healthcare debate, and even threw in some analysis on the future […]
Neuroscientist and artist Beau Lotto joined the TED Blog for a short Q&A after his 2009 talk from TEDGlobal. He covered some of the fascinating, perception-bending projects he wasn’t able to cover in his talk — an iPhone game that substitutes sound for sight; a new way for composers to experience their music synesthetically — […]