I received an email from my dad this afternoon saying somewhat incredulously, "Nicholas is really making this thing happen." For those of you who don’t know, "this thing" is the Hundred Dollar Laptop and Nicholas is long-time TED friend and speaker, Nicholas Negroponte. The evidence that Nicholas is making the Hundred Dollar Laptop happen can […]
I’m just back from an incredible few days in Tanzania with Bono and his team, part of his current tour through Africa. Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News is joining him in Ghana this evening, for the show’s first live broadcast from Africa. I’m sure it’s worth watching. (6.30pm ET, 5.30pm PT, and also […]
If you liked the Sony Bouncy Balls ad, you’ll love this homage, filmed in Wales for the soft drink, Tango.
When Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” premiered at Cannes this weekend, TED2006 photographer Robert Leslie was on hand to capture some behind-the-scenes pics. Below: Pay no attention to those name placards … Director David Guggenheim, movie star Al Gore and producer Lawrence Bender answer questions at the press conference for “An Inconvenient Truth”; Gore at […]
At TED2006, we devoted an unusual amount of our “interstitial” time to a single advertiser, showing three different ads from Honda, all brilliant in their own way. Mind you, Honda has no affiliation with TED. We just like their ads. And we’re not the only ones. Two of the Honda spots — Choir and Impossible […]
In perhaps the most surprising collaboration to come out of TED, string quartet Ethel has recorded a lively little number with … Einstein the talking parrot. We give to you: Also Spracht Einstein. Delightful.
At TED2006, and again at our TED screening of “An Inconvenient Truth,” we witnessed the reinvention of Al Gore as global warming warrior and … stand-up comic? The former VP, not known previously for his stage presence, was surprisingly hilarious in both his rehearsed bits and off-the-cuff comments (to say nothing of the Melissa Etheridge […]
TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair is having a very good year. Fresh on the heels of both the TEDPrize and the RISD/Target Emerging Designer Award, tonight he’ll receive a WIRED Rave Award, recognizing him and his wife/Architecture for Humanity co-founder Kate Stohr for innovation in architecture. WIRED is also raving about other TED speakers, who’ll be […]
The cover of today’s UK Independent is pure genius. They made TED Prize winner Bono guest editor for the day. His front page lead headline reads:"No news today." with a footnote that clarifies: "Just 6,500 Africans died today as a result of a preventable, treatable disease." The novice editor appears to have had access to […]
TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair has a new book coming out – an encyclopedia of sorts that showcases global projects in which design improves living standards – and the Observer has the story. The article has a great summary of how Architecture for Humanity came to be and an idea of where it’s going. For […]
At TED2006, architect Joshua Prince-Ramus held our rapt attention as he deconstructed the process of building the Seattle Library, peeling back the collaborative “hyper-rational” process layer by layer. It was clear to us then that Prince-Ramus — U.S. director of Rem Koolhaas’ architecture firm, OMA — was poised to make a name for himself, independent […]
Not being a regular viewer of Oprah, I somehow missed this a couple weeks’ back. An appearance by the remarkable pianist Jennifer Lin. Two years ago, when she was just 14, she lit up the TED Conference with an astonishing improvisation. (Click the second link on this page.) Her Oprah appearance included some brief clips […]
This week, TIME Magazine puts their annual stake in the ground, naming the 100 most influential people of the moment. As usual, a number of TED veterans among them: Al Gore, Bill (and Melinda) Gates, Bono, Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, the “Flickr founders” and the “Skype guys.”
Banal, yet eye-grabbing science story of the day: U.S. physicists have demonstrated that water droplets can run uphill, propelled by their own steam.
Alan Bennett’s fabulous new play The History Boys opened on Broadway last week at the Broadhurst to uniformly wonderful reviews after sold-out runs in London and Sydney. Set in Thatcher-era England, History Boys takes place in a state school where sixth form boys are preparing to take exams that will admit them to their fantasy […]
I had the pleasure of catching the very first public performance of Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, now playing in San Francisco (April 25-May 21) and coming to Toronto (May 27-July 2) and Chicago (July 5-16) on its way to an August 10th Broadway debut. Written by Short and the hysterical Tony Award-winning musical team […]