Why I love TED

By Julie Starr | Published: June 30, 2008

1. I don’t have to remember to visit TED or subscribe to the RSS feed because people so regularly recommend it on Twitter and elsewhere that I wind up there often enough.

2. It has a fabulously ecclectic mix of engaging speakers.

3. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: the media player rocks. Look at this:

Screengrab of TED's media player

I can watch the video on the page, download it to my desktop or to iTunes (this is new since I last visited), embed it in my blog and link to it. Now that’s sharing.

In case you weren’t sure, they spell out the how and why of sharing:

“TED’s mission is to spread ideas, and we encourage you to share these talks widely: Email them; link to them; embed them in your website; show them in your classroom; discuss them at a salon… All our videos are distributed under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely played and reposted (so long as you follow certain guidelines).”

I can also see at a glance what the video’s about, who’s in it, how long it runs, when it was recorded, when it was posted, how far through I am. I can pause it and fast forward to interesting bits using the information that displays when I hover my mouse over parts of the timeline. And I can comment on it. Nice.