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The most watched and most highly-rated TED talks at the moment

Maxim — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:39:49 +0000

Recently the list of most watched TED talks appeared in TED blog. Very helpful to make sure you didn’t miss anything:

Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity (2006): 8,660,010 views
Jill Bolte Taylor‘s stroke of insight (2008): 8,087,935 views
Pranav Mistry on the thrilling potential of SixthSense (2009): 6,747,410 views
Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense (2009): 6,731,153 views
David Gallo‘s underwater astonishments (2007): 6,411,705 views
Tony Robbins asks Why we do what we do (2006): 4,909,505 views
Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen (2006): 3,954,776 views
Arthur Benjamin does mathemagic (2005): 3,664,705 views
Jeff Han demos his breakthrough multi-touchscreen (2006): 3,592,795 views
Johnny Lee shows Wii Remote hacks for educators (2008): 3,225,864 views
Blaise Aguera y Arcas runs through the Photosynth demo (2007): 3,007,440 views
Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing your genius (2009): 2,978,288 views
Dan Gilbert asks: Why are we happy? (2004): 2,903,993 views
Stephen Hawking asks big questions about the universe (2008): 2,629,230 views
Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation (2009): 2,616,363 views
Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice (2005): 2,263,065 views
Richard St. John shares 8 secrets of success (2005): 2,252,911 views
Mary Roach on the 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm (2009): 2,223,822 views
Simon Sinek on how great leaders inspire action (2010): 2,187,868 views
Chimamanda Adichie shares the danger of a single story (2009): 2,143,763 views

But I decided to take it one step further and create a list of the most highly-rated TED talks.
Which is not hard to do using their Youtube channel statistics. So, here it is. The list of most highly-rated TED talks:

Marcin Jakubowski‘s open-sourced blueprints for civilization (2011): 71,943 views
Mike Ebeling‘s invention that unlocked a locked-in artist (2011): 45,480 views
Khan Salman‘s video to reinvent education (2011): 196,153 views
Michael Pawlyn is using nature’s genius in architecture (2011): 63,910 views
Sugata Mitra‘s new experiments in self-teaching (2010): 124,703 views
Paul Nicklen‘s tales of ice-bound wonderlands (2011): 19,945 views
Dan Phillips‘ creative houses from reclaimed stuff (2010): 42,253 views
Eli Pariser bewares online “filter bubbles” (2011): 363,394 views
Anders Ynnerman visualizes the medical data explosion (2011): 21,781 views
Fiorenzo Omenetto talks about silk, the ancient material of the future (2011): 15,814 views
William Li asks if we can eat to starve cancer (2010): 86,675 views
Anthony Atala talks about printing a human kidney (2011): 69,525 views
Benjamin Zander‘s classical music with shining eyes (2008): 399,387 views
Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity (2006): 8,660,010 views
Charles Limb on how brain works during musical improvisation (2011): 36,419 views
Jack Horner on building a dinosaur from a chicken (2011): 56,213 views
Bart Weetjens on how he taught rats to sniff out land mines (2010): 27,730 views
Sir Ken Robinson on the learning revolution (2010): 233,000 views
Thomas Heatherwick on building the Seed Cathedral (2011): 35,022 views
Angela Belcher on using nature to grow batteries (2011): 26,899 views

Enjoy!

Japan: devil is in the detail

Maxim — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:06:35 +0000

Distinctive features of Japan are well-thought design and attention to details. Compared to Russia the difference is easily visible: economy instead of wide scope, neatness instead of coarseness.

This post is going to be a mixture of various interesting and maybe funny things that didn’t match any particular topic of other posts. So, what caught my inquisitive sight?

Take elevator, for instance. Notice additional buttons for children and disabled.

Although, I need to point out that simplicity is not always the case with elevators. After attempts to understand what colors, lights, buttons, sounds and all in dynamics of the one below actually mean we started to question our intellectual capabilities…

And this is a “control panel” close to bed in hotel. Radio, light, alarm clock and air conditioner. All in one. Light is regulated gradually and not binary: on or off. What is also interesting is how it all integrated together and located properly close to bed.

This is a part of road which attaches to crossroads. In a few meters before the actual crossing its texture and visual component change for obvious reasons.

First I didn’t want to cover such a cliche as Japanese toilets. But I’m afraid I need to do it in order to meet all the expectations. Actually there is no incredible space technologies. More of simple and handy features.

One of the buttons turns on seat heating. Ones with trickles speak for themselves while “+” and “-” buttons allow to change the intensity.

However, it might not be the most advanced one…

Paper is mysterious though. Why 2 rolls? In advance? Although only upper one is recommended for usage. And instruction is there of course. How can you go without an instruction?

Do you have similar examples? Feel free to share!

Other posts about Japan:
1 post: First impressions and pictures;
2 post: Cuisine and food;
3 post: Tea ceremony;
4 post: Devil is in the detail;
5 post: Temples, palaces and gardens.

Designers travelling the world: idea nomads onizou

Maxim — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:14:59 +0000

Last Friday we’ve been to the amazing presentation give by two designers traveling the world that call themselves Idea Nomads in Moscow. Oni and Zou (these are their aliases) have a goal to travel the world without taking flights.

So far, they visited China, Hong Kong, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan giving various creative/design presentations and arranging the workshops and of course doing some self-PR. They don’t seem to be willing to stop so far, the route they had drawn on the world map is far from being complete.

I don’t know about you, but it’s another source of inspiration for me:
http://www.ideanomads.com
http://twitter.com/onizou