If you haven’t visited http://www.ted.com/ yet, then you need to right now! Who is TED, you ask? Turns out, TED is no-one; TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. What started out as an attempt to combine these three fields into one harmonious meeting of the minds has grown into something truly wonderful. TED conferences, currently held yearly in Monterey California and other global locations, bring together many speakers from very diverse backgrounds from all around the world. In the true spirit of sharing knowledge, TED makes these talks available by streaming and download for FREE on their website!
Talks are generally 20 minutes or less, and therefore, very to the point. Topic range wildly, from science, economics and design, to art, literature and mathematics. You can search for talks using common queries like subject matter or speaker, or in more interesting ways, like “most inspiring” or “most ingenious.” You would be hard pressed to not find something that turns your crank. One feature I particularly like is TED’s built in video viewer. You have all the common features like play, stop, pause, forward/reverse and volume, but you also get an interesting overlay when you place the mouse over the video. An overlay pop-up appears at the bottom of the video and shows the content of the talk in a time-line fashion. This time-line allows you to skip to a particular part of the talk that may be of more interest to you, and definitely helps if you want to show someone else just one part of a talk in particular.
There are so many good speakers and topics its hard to know where to start; my personal two favorites are:
#1: Ron Eglash: African fractals, in buildings and braids - this one is awesome!
#2: Vusi Mahlasela: “Thula Mama” – my favorite new artist, this guy is amazing (I reviewed his latest CD here)!
There is a wealth of free knowledge available on the web, but rarely is it presented in such a fun, clean, and creative manner.
