TED Talks Of 2007 Now Playing Online

We told you about TED some time ago. In fact, you’ve probably been told by a great many sources about the renowned nonprofit and its conferences many times over. Nonetheless, it’s wonderful to get the opportunity to speak of it again, if only to mention that the producers of TED Talks have made another sizable infusion to their already very popular video catalogue.

If you’ve lived beneath stone for…at least several years, and you’re not hip to TED, here’s a brief overview:

Several thousand attendees congregate in California, USA, annually and/or Tanzania biennially to listen to stagemen and women cover things that they all should care about, and all of us should care about, too. They try to find solutions to big problems, and more often than not, the answers are involved hand-in-hand with technological invention and advancement, so there are of course a good amount of laptop-toting SV-born geeks populating the conferences audience. There are quite a few politicos and other odd folk scattered about for good measure as well.

(The “statesmen” aren’t there so much for balance as a way to get presenters’ messages across to more people. Plus, some things need government funding, and well, guess who runs government? That’s right.)

Anyhow, if you’ve been waiting and waiting to see the TED Talks of 2007 for yourself, you’ll be happy to know that there are dozens more great 20-minute clips covering a wide range of topics publicly available right now for your viewing pleasure. And, yes, I am sticking with “pleasure”. Some do indeed like watching people speak atop a stage backed by great big digital slides. The guys and gals who watch the Macworld keynote every year get what I mean. (You know who you are.)

The TED Talks site itself is beautifully presented. Easily navigable and attractive to boot, it’s got enough stuff hosted for one to spend hours upon hours consuming. The great part of it is that there’s absolutely no cost to the visitor. Free, free, free. It wasn’t free for TED to put up, however, so do enjoy the videos as much as possible. The New York Times reports that TED’s director of media claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars as the expense necessary to add the media captured from this year’s Monterey, Calif., event all TED Talks to the website.

The Times states that about 100 “talks” are available at the moment, though that is likely to include all recordings of presentations past (2007, 2006, 2005, etc.). Even if that count comprises the total sum of the site’s catalogue, that’s a lot of cool stuff to peruse, so don’t let us keep you any longer. See the Talks without having to had set aside $6,000 to experience in person earlier in the year: watch 'em on the Web.