Do you know TED?

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and bills itself as "Ideas worth spreading."

If I may rip the first two paragraphs from their about page (because they explain who they are better than I can):

"It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)."

Over a four-day period, over 50 speakers do their thing, and right now the web site has over 200 of the talks for you to watch. I've never really browsed through their site to see everything they have available, but I do watch their videos as they pop up on other forums and web sites from time to time. They are always fascinating.

In fact, as I look through the top ten videos, many of the ones I've already seen on other sites are in that list. A couple of my favorites are Blaise Aguera y Arcas's Photosynth demonstration and Hans Rosling using some eye-popping stats as he talks about third-world myths.

Another great part of these videos is they carry a Creative Commons license, which means you are free to distribute them and even use them on your own web site, as long as you follow a few simple rules.

Watch some of these videos. They are well worth your time, they are short, and chock full of good information and new ideas. You won't be disappointed.