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You can now watch TED Talks on your Apple TV
If you like the idea of watching thought-provoking presentations from the comfort of your couch, you're in for a good time. The Apple TV now has a dedicated TED Talks app, so you can watch discussions of public shaming or the future of image recognition on the big screen without streaming from another device or digging through other services. And don't worry if you're in the mood for lighter fare -- Apple has also brought in apps for Tastemade's food and travel network as well as Young Hollywood's eclectic cultural mix. All of the newly available services are free, so you'll have plenty to check out while you're waiting for Apple's long-fabled TV service.
Xprize wants to fund a TED Talk given by artificial intelligence, and you can help
Xprize is known for its ambition. The outfit, with the help of some big name (and deep pocketed) partners, has launched initiatives to spur Star Trek-like tricorder development and even get private industry to land a rover on the moon. But now, it's teaming up with TED, that forum for big ideas, to do something a little different. The two companies have just announced an Xprize for Artificial Intelligence and here's the hook: they want the AI to conduct its own TED Talk with no human assist. Mind. Blown. None of this is actually set in stone though and, in fact, the partners are looking to you -- yes, you -- for help in deciding how this all goes down. Xprize is hosting a dedicated subsite so that readers (excuse us, big thinkers!) like you can pitch in with ideas on what the AI TED Talk format should be, how long it should run, what topic will be chosen and so on and so forth. You'll even get to help determine what type of AI makes the grade: will it be a walking robot, a rollie or a disembodied voice? It's up to you to pitch in and figure it out. Because, hey, if you can't actually help build the AI, setting it up for stage fright is the next best thing.
Bing broadens Snapshot to include TED Talks, famous speeches and more straight from the results page
How do you improve adoption of a search engine? You make it so users never have to leave the results page, or so Microsoft's latest Bing enhancements would suggest. With the bevy of new features Bing's introduced today, users with an academic or historical bent can now get pretty much all the info they need directly from Snapshot, its preview window for queries. Searches for prominent people will now surface links to any famous speeches or TED Talks they've given, with content playing either from within that pane or just one-click away. Bing will also present users with online course listings for Universities, Wikipedia-sourced summaries for historic events and scientific theories, as well pertinent Animalia info (so you can figure out if that's a husky or a wolf you've just adopted). In all, it seems like these search enhancements are geared towards the academic set. So, it's good news if you're the lazy collegiate type -- now you don't even have to open separate tabs.
Thomas Dolby's Wild Ride
The exterior of the Canal Room is a touch jarring in the harsh light of day. The street-level windows of the TriBeCa brick building are plastered with giant, neon posters advertising the venue's reoccurring theme nights - events with names like "Back to the Eighties Show featuring RUBIX KUBE: The Ultimate '80s Tribute Band" and "Saved By The '90s: A Party with The Bayside Tigers." Checkerboard backgrounds and pictures of Screech abound. And for a moment, I'm worried for Thomas Dolby. It's hard not to entertain images of the singer being tortured with Teddy Ruxpins, forced to perform 30-year-old songs for a crowd of middle-aged showgoers squeezed into their prom dresses, in defiance of all laws of physics. Things are much less troubling inside, however. The lights are dim and there's no neon to be seen - and while Dolby himself is MIA a few hours ahead of the show, a pair of dancers run around the space all steampunked out in corsets and high-heeled boots. One spots our photographer and asks whether we're there to "shoot the belly dancer." It's an interaction I can't help but relate to Dolby when he finally arrives, off-handedly comparing the whole thing to a traveling circus of sorts. "Actually," he responds, "it's quite simple compared to some other show. There's no video here, only three musicians, so this is the simple version." This is the scaled-back version of Dolby's live show in 2012. For one thing, the tour had to leave its chrome 1930s-era trailer back in Jersey. Apparently it's just too difficult to get a giant time capsule through the Holland Tunnel. In its absence, Dolby describes the vehicle as appearing to have been "modified by Jules Verne and Nikola Tesla," adding that it "houses a video suite, which allows anybody from the public to shoot a 30-second message to the future. So, we've got a YouTube channel called Time Capsule TV and people are uploading these messages that they shoot in the time capsule and the most popular ones, based on the views and so on, we'll sort of preserve for posterity, for the future."
TED expands its reach with streaming talks on Netflix
You can already watch TED talks on any number of devices via the web or the various apps available, but the oft-debated conference / organization has now added another fairly big feather to its cap: it's streaming on Netflix. That includes around 200 talks to start with, which have been grouped into 14 different "shows" with titles like Space Trek, Cyber Awe, Building Wonder and Video & Photo Mojo. Those are naturally all available in HD, and they can be seen in Canada, Latin America, the UK and Ireland in addition to the US.
Android finally gets an official TED app
TED -- it's exclusive, endlessly fascinating, pretentious and addictive as hell. Sadly, for those of you out there rocking Android devices, getting your fix on the go required you download the talks as podcasts or use one of many unofficial and highly unreliable apps from the market. That source of frustration comes to an end now, though, with the launch of the official TED app for Android. It's free, it works on tablets and phones and it's available now -- what more could you ask for? Hit up the source link to download it and fire up one of the 1,200-plus TEDTalks available.
Mini quadrotors play Bond, James Bond (video)
This week's TED2012 conference isn't all talk -- sometimes the videos features speak for themselves. Check out this phenomenal one from the University of Pennsylvania starring a number of nano quadrotors playing the James Bond theme by banging percussion, hitting the piano and strumming a guitar. The room in the video has infrared lights and cameras and the 'copters are outfitted with reflectors, making it possible to plot their position. The result is technical wizardry worthy of Q himself. Check it out after the break.
TED launches iPhone app, brings spread-worthy ideas to the small screen
Looking for wisdom on your iPhone? Well, you're in luck, because TED's celebrated iOS app is now available on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app, much like its iPad-specific predecessor, allows users to access a wealth of TED Talks via streaming video or audio. The revamped tool also features a new bookmarks tab, where listeners can save talks for later listening, as well as the new TED Radio -- a station chock full of TED Talk audio streams, running all day. It's available as a free download now, so hit up the source link, and enjoy learning.
Zuckerman: the Internet encourages cultural myopia, that 'double rainbow' guy
At a recent TED talk, entrepreneur and Harvard scholar Ethan Zuckerman (above, in the most embarrassing pic we could find of him), highlighted the ways that our Internet use might be counter-productive. While potentially a great source of information, perspective, and communication, he points out that "[w]hen we look at what's actually happening, our world-view might actually be narrowing" because we tend to stay within a certain small group of websites -- and perspectives. In the UK, for instance, more than 95% of news consumers send their traffic to domestic news sites, while social networks encourage you to limit communication to the small group of people who share your world view. "The wider world is a click away, but whether we mean to or not, we're usually filtering it out." he said. Lest you think this topic is all gloom and doom, Ethan & Co. are actively looking for ways to correct this and bring the Internet closer to the Utopian vision we all have of it. "We have to figure out how to rewire the systems we have. We have to fix our media, we have to fix the Internet, we have to fix education."
The fashion industry survives without copyright protection -- can the rest of us?
I really dig this TED talk from USC's Johanna Blakely about how the lack of copyright and patent protection for clothing design has accelerated the creative pace of the fashion industry, and I think she nails it when she points out that digital technologies have collapsed copyright law's traditional distinction between ideas and tangible expression. It's become so easy to create, copy, remix, and share that those definitions don't really apply anymore. On the other hand, I don't think simply doing away with IP protections entirely is the answer. (I'm a lawyer, after all.) While I'm not saying fashion is easy, I would argue that it's easier for fashion designers to iterate and differentiate, and that the harm done to Gucci by ripoff handbags is much less damaging than the harm done to an author or musician by someone who copies their work -- unlike the Gucci bag, the customers for original books and music often are the same people who buy the fakes, and not everyone will seek out the original. What's more, I often find that arguments against IP protections are often made very idealistically, where competition, remix, and creativity only produce happy results, but sometimes things get stolen simply because it's easy and cheap to make money that way, and IP laws provide protection against that sad reality. The real question, in my mind, is how best to balance those protections against creative freedoms, not whether we're protecting ideas or expressions. Anyway, it's a great presentation that everyone should watch -- check it after the break.
Toshiba and Bill Gates-backed TerraPower discussing small-scale nuclear reactors
It would seem that Toshiba hasn't given up on its dream of producing a nuclear reactor for the home, and its latest potential partner counts quite the big name among its backers. Run by a former Microsoft exec and partially funded by Bill Gates himself, TerraPower is said to have opened preliminary discussions with Toshiba regarding a possible joint venture between the two companies. The aim is, predictably, to make safer, smaller, more socially acceptable, and just plain better reactors. TerraPower boasts its tech can run without refueling for up to 60 years on depleted uranium and Bill Gates has gotten enthusiastic enough about the whole thing to give a 30-minute talk on the matter. Click past the break for the video.
Photosynth creator walks us through Bing Maps, gives us a taste of augmented reality's future (video)
We were pretty stoked when we heard all about the new toys that Microsoft was adding to Bing Maps (Street View-esque navigation, Photosynth integration, crowd sourcing content, so on and so forth), and it looks like things are really coming together nicely. If you hop on past the break, we've thoughtfully embedded Blaise Aguera y Arcas' TED Talk where the Microsoft Live Labs architect and co-creator of Photosynth gives a sweet overview of the project as the foundation for a pretty robust augmented reality setup. The crowd gasps, applauds, and speaks in tongues repeatedly throughout the eight minute talk -- which is really what you'd expect from the Glenn Beck crowd, not the head of the technology, entertainment, and design fraternity (at least those who attend conferences). But don't take our word for it! Check it out and tell us what you think.
TED Talks mischief: lasers killing mosquitoes by the hundreds
Malaria is a huge problem worldwide, so it's no surprise to anyone that plenty of people spend lots of time trying to think of ways to rid the world of mosquitoes, prime movers of the disease. Nathan Myhrvold's company Intellectual Ventures Labs (and former chief technology officer at Microsoft) is focusing on just that. Using widely available and common electronics parts, Intellectual Ventures has made lasers which can kill mosquitoes mid-flight -- at a rate of about 50 to 100 per second. Myhrvold first publicly demonstrated this laser (which is made of parts of printers, digital cameras, and projectors) at the TED conference the other day, using hundreds of mosquitoes in a clear glass case to make his point. The laser's software determines the size and shape of the target before deciding whether or not to shoot, so, for instance -- it wouldn't take aim at a person or a bumblebee. The lasers could be used to protect hospitals and clinics in areas with high mosquito populations and in areas with a high rate of malaria infestation. Now, this is surprisingly not the first time we've seen such a trick -- though it is the first time we've seen video evidence of it working. There are some insanely informative (and murderous) videos at the source link. Be sure to check them out. Update: Video is after the break.
