TED talk videos available through free iPhone app
This weekend, an iPhone app for TED.com was released. Now in case you don't know what TED.com is, it's a website that serves as a digital archive of talks by "the world's leading thinkers and doers" at the aptly named TED conference. The talks themselves span from talking about quantum physics to gorgeous girls playing ukuleles, and in general are of excellent quality.
The TED app itself (free, App Store) allows you to view all the videos and audio available on Ted.com right on your iPhone, and doesn't just link you to youtube videos either, opting for full quicktime movies. You can favourite videos, share them with your friends - all fairly standard stuff.
While the entire video archive is present, the only way to navigate at the moment is by searching - in which case you'd better have something in mind - or by thumbing through a huge list of videos. One of the best features of TED.com is the navigation they provide for viewing their media - it certainly would be nice to allow iPhone users to navigate the TED archives by the same criteria - like most discussed, related themes or recently updated.
With an app like this, it's important to stress how the real news here is not the app itself, but the content it gives iPhone users access to. TED talks are usually enlightening or entertaining in a way that very little media is, and previously the best way to get TED talks onto an iPhone was via using their video podcast through iTunes - so it's nice to have easy access to them.
If you already use TED.com, this is a treat. If you've never watched anything from TED, now is the perfect time to start.
The TED app itself (free, App Store) allows you to view all the videos and audio available on Ted.com right on your iPhone, and doesn't just link you to youtube videos either, opting for full quicktime movies. You can favourite videos, share them with your friends - all fairly standard stuff.
While the entire video archive is present, the only way to navigate at the moment is by searching - in which case you'd better have something in mind - or by thumbing through a huge list of videos. One of the best features of TED.com is the navigation they provide for viewing their media - it certainly would be nice to allow iPhone users to navigate the TED archives by the same criteria - like most discussed, related themes or recently updated.
With an app like this, it's important to stress how the real news here is not the app itself, but the content it gives iPhone users access to. TED talks are usually enlightening or entertaining in a way that very little media is, and previously the best way to get TED talks onto an iPhone was via using their video podcast through iTunes - so it's nice to have easy access to them.
If you already use TED.com, this is a treat. If you've never watched anything from TED, now is the perfect time to start.