Mid-1990s: The dot-com bubble balloons; venture-capital cash and lucrative stock options flow like cheap champagne.
1994: Entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, a regular TED fixture, founds Amazon.com.
1995: Journalist Louis Rossetto and publishing partner Jane Metcalfe receive seed money to launch their European publication, The Electric Word, in the U.S. under the new name of Wired.
1999: Chris Anderson launches Business 2.0; he credits the title to a conversation he had in a bathroom during a TED conference
2004: Feminist writer and activist Eve Ensler talks vaginas and describes her unhappy childhood
2005: Fourteen-year-old composer Jennifer Lin brings the TED audience to tears with a piano performance that redefines the meaning of “child prodigy.”
2006: Jeff Han demonstrates a multi-touch interface that lets you manipulate objects onscreen with your hands, an invention that foreshadows the iPhone
2008: TEDTalks receives its 50 millionth video view in June.
…

2010: TEDxTelAviv takes place, April 26. You can apply here.

Read the full article from I.D. Magazine

Image (c) Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

Here is a re-post of an answer from TED’s curator, Chris Anderson:

Numerous members of the TED community have sought to find a way to help victims of the Haiti quake. We believe one of the organizations best placed to make an immediate difference is Partners in Health. They have operated medical facilities in Haiti for more than two decades and have numerous people on the ground. (We had the honor of working with them as part of President Clinton’s TED Prize wish. They’re trustable and effective.)

We asked how best the TED community could help and this was their response.

Read on for how to help here

In this TEDtalk from 2005(!!), Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, takes us through from “a very radical idea…to give every person on the planet access to the sum of all human knowledge…” that has become the turned-to resource: Wikipedia.

P.S. Wikipedia only started in 2001!

And then wander over to the TED blog to read a treat of a Q&A: more of his personal refugee experience and his path in international policy and development. You can also read his mother Cam Youk Lim’s story, as told to him, in this NYtimes article.

P.S. Am getting excited for the talks that will come out of TEDGlobal – happening in Oxford next week!

Before watching this I admit to thinking of husband and wife team Eames as amazing “chair designers”.

So it is a pleasure to discover their range of works: videos, architecture, projects and interests (clowning?!) through rare footage and photos in this delightful tribute to their design process by their grandson, Eames Demetrios.

“Happiness is not just the absence of misery” is one of the findings Nancy Etcoff, the instructor of “The Science of Happiness” at Harvard Medical School, shares with us as she explores research and theories on happiness, pleasure and contentment.

And in one of the most popular TED talks of all time, “Happiness Expert” Dan Gilbert suggests that most of our assumptions about happiness are actually wrong. But don’t worry, we can still ’stumble’ on it.

Wishing you a happy start to the week!

Directed and narrated by actress Daphne Zuniga, this intellectually-charged film captures the best of TED 2006, including mind-blowing appearances by former Vice President Al Gore, Dr. Larry Brilliant, the man who led the successful campaign to eradicate smallpox, Nicholas Negroponte, a computer scientist with plans to put a $100 laptop into the hands of students in the developing world, the founders of Google, and many more inspired and inspiring TEDsters. More on IMDB.

The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED is available on iTunes or Amazon

The most translated TEDTalk (24 languages!) is this exciting talk by Hans Rosling, which with the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, debunks myths about the so-called “developing world”. To watch this with Hebrew translation go here.