The 20 most-watched TED Talks to date. TEDTalks The 20 most-watched TEDTalks (so far) Today, on the fifth birthday of TEDTalks video, we’re releasing a new list of the 20 most-watched TEDTalks over the past five years — as watched on all the platforms we track: TED.com, YouTube, iTunes, embed and download, Hulu and more … What a great, mixed-up group this is! Talks about education and creativity, sex […] Playlist The 20 most popular TED Talks, as of December 2013 UPDATED: To see all these talks at one click, check out our updated Playlist: The 20 Most Popular Talks of All Time. As 2013 draws to a close, TED is deeply humbled to have posted 1600+ talks, each representing an idea worth spreading. Marissa Mayer Biography. Simply brilliant life hacks. Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies.
Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery. The Original Snow Goon must be making his OWN Snow Goons. I'll bet he's making an army! In a few days, he could build a hundred snow goons! If each of THEM built a ANOTHER hundred, and then THOSE all built a hundred MORE, why... that would be pretty cool, if they weren't out to kill me. I'm looking for something that can deliver a 50-pound payload of snow on a small feminine target. --- Calvin Calvin: This is going to be the biggest snowman ever built!
Snow, Snow! Calvin: It snowed last night! "Snowgoons on the horizon... I should be doing my homework now. Calvin: Dad, if you threw a snowball at someone, but deliberately missed, would that be "bad"? ANY dumb kid can build a snowman, but it takes a genius like me to create ART. There's More to Life Than Being Happy - Emily Esfahani Smith. "It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness. " In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, was arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents.
Three years later, when his camp was liberated, most of his family, including his pregnant wife, had perished -- but he, prisoner number 119104, had lived. In his bestselling 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning, which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life. When he was a high school student, one of his science teachers declared to the class, "Life is nothing more than a combustion process, a process of oxidation. " As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not.
As Anna S. I am the Orson Welles of Powerpoint. I am the Orson Welles of PowerPoint 2010. Next slide. I don’t let marketing get in the way of a potential masterpiece. You see I don’t create mere presentations. I use technology and the language of our times to evoke human emotions from my audience. I’m not a junior sales manager, I’m a storyteller. At one point, artists and the alleged tastemakers of society scoffed at the notion of motion pictures. So too will history one day be unkind to those who belittle the artistic merits of my PowerPoint journeys.
My slides are arranged with a careful eye to typography and design; two well trusted guardians of the Modern Arts. The transitions I select from the pre-determined palette are individually chosen with consideration for both aesthetics and narrative lubrication. No two of my PowerPoints are the same. I don’t use PowerPoint in the same manner as my peers. I believe that sometimes a PowerPoint demands five consecutive pages of full bleed abstract images. 9 Mind-Blowing Epiphanies That Turned My World Upside-Down. Over the years I’ve learned dozens of little tricks and insights for making life more fulfilling. They’ve added up to a significant improvement in the ease and quality of my day-to-day life. But the major breakthroughs have come from a handful of insights that completely rocked my world and redefined reality forever. The world now seems to be a completely different one than the one I lived in about ten years ago, when I started looking into the mechanics of quality of life.
It wasn’t the world (and its people) that changed really, it was how I thought of it. Maybe you’ve had some of the same insights. 1. The first time I heard somebody say that, I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. I see quite clearly now that life is nothing but passing experiences, and my thoughts are just one more category of things I experience. If you can observe your thoughts just like you can observe other objects, who’s doing the observing? 2. Of course! 3. 4. 5. Yikes. 6. 7. 8. 9. If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This - Peter Bregman. This morning, like every morning, I sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, rested my hands on my knees, closed my eyes, and did nothing but breathe for 20 minutes. People say the hardest part about meditating is finding the time to meditate. This makes sense: who these days has time to do nothing? It’s hard to justify. Meditation brings many benefits: It refreshes us, helps us settle into what’s happening now, makes us wiser and gentler, helps us cope in a world that overloads us with information and communication, and more.
But if you’re still looking for a business case to justify spending time meditating, try this one: Meditation makes you more productive. How? Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance. Our ability to resist an impulse determines our success in learning a new behavior or changing an old habit. As it turns out, that’s one of the things meditation teaches us.
That’s it. The Elegant Email — www.randsinrepose. For me, the amount of email that arrives is inversely proportionate to my amount of free time. This means the less time I have to read mail, the more mail that arrives. Greater minds than mine have attempted to tackle this unfortunate time management situation, so I’m going to keep it simple. You and I are busy people. We may or may not know each other, but we have the same goal – how can each of us effectively surf an ever-growing pile of information? To this end, I would like to come to an agreement with you. An Email Contract Before we start, there are two kinds of email: original content and follow-on content. Let’s begin… Say something of substance with your subject. As I’m considering a subject line, I work under the erroneous, paranoid assumption that the someone I’m sending an email to is not going to read it.
Yes, poetry. In the world of databases, there is a concept called an index. A three (or four) paragraph limit. Here’s the deal. Think. A Sense of Doneness and Humanity Rands. 90 Things I've Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies — betashop. On October 27, 2010 I wrote a blog post about the “57 Things I Learned Founding 3 Tech Companies.” It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. This past week while I was in Tokyo for meetings with potential partners for Fab, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on startups. The discussion quickly turned to those 57 things. Amazing. Thousands of miles away and two years later, people still want to talk about those 57 things!
So, here goes. 90 Things I’ve Learned Founding 4 Tech Companies: 9 Easy Ways to Remember Your Presentation Material : Lifestyle. Crush your anxiety with these methods that will help you thoroughly remember all of your slides before you get to them. April 11, 2012 One of the most common reasons we experience presentation anxiety is the fear that we will forget what we have to say and risk losing credibility. A method many use to address this fear is to create PowerPoint slides as a memory aid. However, this is short-sighted because nothing erodes your credibility as a speaker faster than signaling to the audience that you are dependent on your slides.
Seasoned presenters are able to announce a slide before showing it. Here are nine tips to help you remember what you have to say. 1. Research into brain science has proven that there is a very deep connection between the way we remember an event and the space in which it occurred. 2. Mind maps are diagrams that allow you to lay out all of your presentation material in a visual shape rather than in list form. 3. 4.
How long should you be rehearsing your presentation? 5. No, you're not entitled to your opinion. Every year, I try to do at least two things with my students at least once. First, I make a point of addressing them as “philosophers” – a bit cheesy, but hopefully it encourages active learning. Secondly, I say something like this: “I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘everyone is entitled to their opinion.’ Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, maybe to head off an argument or bring one to a close. Well, as soon as you walk into this room, it’s no longer true.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.” A bit harsh? The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. Firstly, what’s an opinion? Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief (doxa) and certain knowledge, and that’s still a workable distinction today: unlike “1+1=2” or “there are no square circles,” an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it.
Solving Gen Y's Passion Problem - Cal Newport. By Cal Newport | 9:00 AM September 18, 2012 Generation Y, of which I’m a member, is entering the job market in record numbers, and according to many commentators things are not going well. One of the best-known books about my cohort, for instance, is titled Generation Me. The New York Post called us “The Worst Generation,” while USA Today noted that we are “pampered” and “high maintenance.” Earlier this year, a New York Times op-ed called us “Generation Why Bother,” noting that we’re “perhaps…too happy at home checking Facebook,” when we could be out aggressively seeking new jobs and helping the economy recover.
The fact that up to a third of 25-34 year-olds now live with their parents only supports these gripes. To many, the core problem of this generation is clear: we’re entitled. Generation Y was raised during the period when “follow your passion” became pervasive career advice. Why is this a problem? It’s this final implication that causes damage.
Mohsin Hamid: “The Third-Born” One cold, dewy morning, you are huddled, shivering, on the packed earth under your mother’s cot. Your anguish is the anguish of a boy whose chocolate has been thrown away, whose remote controls are out of batteries, whose scooter is busted, whose new sneakers have been stolen. This is all the more remarkable since, wealth-obsessed though you will come to be, you’ve never in your life seen any of these things. The whites of your eyes are yellow, a consequence of spiking bilirubin levels in your blood. The virus afflicting you is called hepatitis E. Its typical mode of transmission is fecal-oral. Yum. It kills only about one in fifty, so you’re likely to recover. Your mother has encountered this condition many times, or conditions like it, anyway.
What she says is “Don’t leave us here.” She is addressing your father, who has heard this request before. He says, “I can’t afford to bring you to the city.” “We could stay with you in the quarters.” “I share my room with the driver. You hesitate. Michael Lewis: Obama’s Way. Obama was 20 or more years older than most of them, and probably not as physically gifted, though it was hard to say because of the age differences. No one held back, no one deferred. Guys on his team dribbled past him and ignored the fact he was wide open. When he drives through the streets, crowds part, but when he drives to the basket large, hostile men slide over to cut him off. It’s revealing that he would seek out a game like this but even more that others would give it to him: no one watching would have been able to guess which guy was president.
“No one seems to be taking it easy on him,” I said. “If you take it easy on him, you’re not invited back,” he explained. I thought to myself, It must be hard not to take it easy on the president. The point guard laughed, turned to another guy on the bench, and said, “Remember Rey?” “Who’s Rey?” “Rey pump-faked, turned, and just connected with the president right in the mouth,” the other guy said.
“Where’s Rey?” “Rey hasn’t been back.” Zain Latif: The Man With the Midas Touch - Entrepid. Ramit Sethi Exposed: How He Earns Millions Blogging. Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule. July 2009 One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more. There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule.
The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour. When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception.
I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Our case is an unusual one. I wouldn't be surprised if there start to be more companies like us. Related: Wolfram Alpha's Facebook Report Analyzes Every Dark Corner of Your Facebook Activity. US teen invents advanced cancer test using Google. Ben's blog. Video - Bragging Gets a Boost From Social Media. Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth (Part One)
The Credit Illusion. Charles Murray: Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem. The Most Inspirational Comics You'll Ever Read. Transcript: Schmidt and Thiel smackdown. Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, and Peter Thiel, technology investor and entrepreneur, participated in a lively debate at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen, CO, about the future of technology, and so much more. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky moderated. Below is an unedited transcript of the event. Eric Schmidt (left) and Peter Thiel in a lighter moment. ADAM LASHINSKY: Gentlemen, Eric, why don't you go sit on the far side. Peter, maybe sit next to me. I won't make any jokes about who is on the right or who is on the left. We've got plenty of time for that. Good evening, everybody. Okay, we have two of the most distinguished people in the technology industry in Silicon Valley to hear very different perspectives tonight. Sitting next to him, a man who really needs as little introduction as Peter does is Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google.
I'm going to ask each gentleman to speak for about four or five minutes on what their perspective is on this. MORE: Thiel vs. Peter? PETER THIEL: Yes. Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work. Facebook Is Using You. Financial Times - Tribal Workers. 32 Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow - Interactive Feature. Procrastination. All Revenue is Not Created Equal: The Keys to the 10X Revenue Club. Sure thing, I'd LOVE to help you move out of your two bedroom apartment! 40 Of The Most Powerful Photographs Ever Taken.
OK Go's Damian Kulash on the Future of the Music Business. The IPO of the decade? My valuation of Facebook. Creating in-cell bar charts / histograms in excel. 4 Things the NFL Can Teach Us About How to Succeed in Business - Jordan Weissmann - Business. How to Make Wealth.