Fans of Jeff Han‘s touchscreen will enjoy this demo of ILoveSketch, highly intuitive new software that enables designers to create fluid 3D sketches through a gesture-driven interface: ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo. Via Kevin Kelly at The Technium.
Sometimes when you’re busy peering into space, space comes to you. This chance footage of a huge meteor rocketing through the sky is just awesome: Many lucky witnesses were also treated to a sonic boom. Did any Canadian or northern-U.S. TEDsters see this in person? (Or hear odd noises on your mobile devices around 5pm […]
To present BusinessWeek writer Steve Hamm’s new book, The Race for Perfect: Inside the Quest to Design the Ultimate Portable Computer, his own magazine asked the artist Joseph Lambert to turn one chapter into a graphic adaptation. Lambert illustrates the role of Alan Kay, “whose ideas shaped the development of today’s laptops, handhelds, and smartphones.” […]
You have 8 hours left to contribute to the Preamble of the Charter for Compassion. Tonight at midnight EST, writing begins on the next phase: the Affirmations. In the Affirmations section of the Charter, you can contribute by writing short descriptions of the eight core elements of compassion: Compassion as empathy, not pity. Compassion as […]
This past weekend, we added a captcha system to TED.com’s “Send this user an email” feature. We’re using reCaptcha, which harnesses the mighty power of captcha to help digitize old books and newspapers. Right now, reCaptcha is decoding texts from the Internet Archive (watch Brewster Kahle talk about the Internet Archive on TED.com). We take […]
By recognizing that the Golden Rule is fundamental to all world religions, the Charter for Compassion can inspire people to think differently about religion. This Charter is being created in a collaborative project by people from all over the world. It will be completed in 2009. You can help write the charter. Or inspire others […]
From Google.org (headed by 2006 TED Prize winner Larry Brilliant) comes this neat data display: Google Flu Trends. The project came about after some Google search engineers wondered if, in communities where more people searched on the term “flu,” there might actually be more flu. After talking with the Predict and Prevent group at Google.org, […]
Whatever else we believe in, most of us believe in the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When Karen Armstrong won the TED Prize, she wished for the Charter for Compassion, a document that affirms this core belief. The Charter will prove that most people around the world […]
Via LiveScience, this report: An astounding batch of new deep-sea discoveries, from strange shark behavior to gigantic bacteria, was announced today by an international group of 2,000 scientists from 82 nations. The Census of Marine Life is a 10-year project to determine what’s down there. At their meeting in Spain this week, COML researchers will […]
Ushahidi is a crowdsourcing tool that lets ordinary people report the news via txt, email and the web — a crucial thing in fast-developing crises when there’s little mainstream media on the ground. Ushahidi was built in a few days earlier this year, in response to the chaos following the Kenyan elections. It’s become a […]
Looking for something to do with your spare energy post-Nov. 4? Find some inspiration in TEDTalks on: Social change, activism and fighting poverty >> Creativity and art >> Way-new education >> Suggest your own favorites in the comments below or via email to contact@ted.com.
Our TEDTalk today, from Ideo’s Tim Brown, comes from the 2008 Art Center Design Conference, wonderfully named Serious Play. Curated by the design legend Chee Pearlman, the Serious Play conference was held this past May at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. A nice benefit of holding a conference at a design school: […]
The great popularizer of hard science, Michael Crichton, died yesterday. In his books, millions of readers were introduced to scientific concepts such as cloning, the spread of new diseases, nanoassembly, deep-sea exploration, quantum computing and the discussion around climate change. From a note to fans on MichaelCrichton.net: Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an […]
CNN has a story today on the Magic Wall they’ve been using in their coverage of the US elections. The wall was built by TEDTalks star Jeff Han and his company Perceptive Pixel. From the story: Throughout the 2008 primaries and the general election, John King, CNN’s Chief National Correspondent, has stood before the now-familiar […]
This week, Rolex joins our family of sponsors who help us share TEDTalks with the world for free. Over the next 12 weeks, you’ll see new postroll videos from Rolex attached to selected talks, and on Rolex’s sponsor page on TED.com. (And in the TED tradition, Rolex’s video is a treat to watch — espcially […]
Rives writes in to tells us: “A few months ago a researcher at a French ad company was scouring the web, looking for ‘real people’ who could be featured in a European ad campaign … He comes across my ‘If I Controlled the Internet‘ poem on TEDTalks and figures: This is the guy.” See the […]