TED Talks: Debunking myths about the "Third World"

This is a fantastic presentation made by Prof. Hans Rosling at the TED Talks last year. Prof Rosling is a global health visionary and a professor at Sweden's Karolinska Institute. He is also the founder of GapMinder, a company that "unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations."

In this presentation, Prof Rosling uses these beautiful animations to disprove some myths and misconceptions about the state of the "Third World countries". What I love about this presentation is the incredible amount of energy that this guy has. He mixes in humor, excitement and drama to capture the attention of the audience. Good stuff :) Check it out here...



Btw, if you are looking for some great speeches and presentations by visionaries, you should check out TED - Technology, Entertainment and Design. It's an annual conference where thinkers and visionaries from around the world come down to share their thoughts. These are some of the TED Talks I found powerful and inspiring:

U2's Bono on Poverty in Africa
Steven Levitt, Author (Freakonomics)
Richard Dawkins, Author (The God Delusion)
Jeff Han, Inventor of Multitouch Technology (a la iPhone)
Al Gore on Global Warming
Majora Carter on community building in the Bronx

Prashant.

twist in the story...

Wow.. Just when you thought the story was wrapping up with a happy ending.. the prison break guys have done it again!

I just finished watching the last episode of Season 2... and I'm hungry for more. I don't know who the story writer for Prison Break is, but I know that he's one helluva writer :) For those who haven't seen the episode yet, I suggest you go n watch it ASAP... and for those who don't know what I'm talking about... well... wake up!

Prison break has done a brilliant job of keeping the excitement alive for 44 freakin episodes... And they have a brilliant way of mixing in suspense with the story line... There's always some question or the other that keeps nagging you as soon as you watch each episode! And the smart thing is that, even though its all just one story, they keep changing focus every few episodes... and that keeps you from getting bored... The timing is perfect too! Just as you get a vague feeling that you might get bored, they pop in these totally unexpected twists!

And of course the acting is awesome. Coupled with good camera work and smooth screenplay, the production is just kick ass.

This time around, it seemed like they were wrapping up the entire series... all the bad guys were dead/in jail, the good guys were free and it looked like a fairy tale ending. And boom! I'm suddenly in a different world... from out of nowhere, they bring in a secret military research center and.... oh wait, don't let me spoil it for you. Go watch it!

Just Google!

Want Joost Beta invites?

Ever heard of Joost? Well, they're the new Interactive Internet TV Startup founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (the founders of Kazaa and Skype). Joost offers a downloadable client that uses P2P technology to stream TV content to you on demand.

Notably, these guys managed to sign a deal with content providers Viacom (the guys who own MTV and Comedy Central) recently.

I've tried out their software and it's pretty cool! The UI is really slick and the video quality is great! And mind you, Joost is not like the Democracy player or the Metacafe player where the videos are downloaded to your computer in the background and then play from your hard disk. Joost actually streams the content to you over P2P. I'm not talking about puny, low quality vids like Youtube. Joost gives you what looks like TV quality video.

The amount of content is not that great right now, but that's understandable as they're on beta. They should be adding a lot of good quality content soon.

So, any of you interested in a Beta-invite? Let me know in the comments and I'll send you one. Hurry up, coz my invites expire by Mar 22...

Prashant.

Shift happens!

Watch Youtube on your Ipod

Wanna watch Youtube videos on your iPod? Check out iTube!

iTube downloads your favorite Youtube videos, converts it to the iPod format and imports it into iTunes with just one click! All you have to do is paste the URL of the Youtube video into iTube and it takes care of everything else... pretty cool, huh? Now you can watch those dumb ass videos wherever you go!

iTube's free btw... and it also works with Metacafe, Dailymotion and other video sites...

Prashant.
Photo: iPod by Franck, Flickr.com

StumbleVideo - Just what I wanted!

So you've heard of StumbleUpon right? What StumbleUpon did was to bring the concept of TV channel surfing to the Internet. StumbleUpon is a browser plugin that allows you to basically 'stumble upon' new sites that are recommended by other users. So you don't know where you're gonna go next but you know what kind of stuff you wanna see (you specify your interests in the settings). Pretty cool idea, but... It's just that this channel surfing concept didn't really gel well with websites... I played around with it for a bit, found some cool websites, and then later got bored...

NOW, the same company has just released their latest website - StumbleVideo, where they go one step closer to a real TV. StumbleVideo basically allows you to 'channel surf' through videos from YouTube, Metacafe, Google videos, etc. Again, you specify the 'channel' you like - this includes humor, guitar, news, dancing, etc. Have you ever gone to one of these video sites just to look around? To look for something to watch? Have you gone to these sites just to waste time? Well, then StumbleVideo is just for you. It takes the effort out of timepass! You just click the Stumble button to go to the next video...

The Digg aspect
Where's the Web2.0 part you ask? Well, of course! Users can vote for the video ("I like it") or against it ("Not for me"). So, the videos are basically streamed based on their popularity. Pretty cool, huh?

And oh yea, if you register an account (the cool part is that you don't have to, if you just wanna watch some videos), it will keep track of your preferences and show videos that you might like. Also, you can connect with other Stumblers and see what they like/don't like...

Hmm, I guess they've covered all the bases for a Web2.0, UGC, community-powered site! Anyways, do check it out... I liked it!

Prashant.

MSN Soapbox Preview

I just got my invitation for the beta of the MSN Soapbox today. Soapbox is Microsoft's answer to Youtube. (refer to my previous post about Google's acquisition of Youtube here.) So, it basically allows users to upload and share their videos.

I just checked it out and here's my take on it...

The interface looks pretty cool. Microsoft has departed from it's Windows Live color scheme while designing Soapbox and it looks like they've done a good job. (Click the thumbnail below to check out a screenshot).

There aren't too many videos there yet though and I guess it's just because it's still in limited beta. I was amused to see that many of the videos were Microsoft or Bill Gates related. These were probably from the initial bunch of videos that Microsoft must have put in there to start off with.

The user interface is pretty intuitive as well. The player looks pretty good and handles well. One thing I liked in particular about the interface is that you can click away on the other parts of the page without interrupting the video that is playing on the side. This is a welcome change from the YouTube interface where you essentially cannot browse other videos while one video is playing.

The videos are limited to a maximum file size of 100 MB and the site accepts a number of different video formats including AVI, MPEG, MOV, WMV and even 3GPP (a popular video format used in mobile phones).

So, all in all, the site seems pretty good. Unfortunately, that's not sufficient to ensure success in the online video sharing space. There are plenty of sites out there that do all this and much more. And of course there are the well entrenched ones like Youtube. (Now that Google's behind Youtube, they are perhaps more formidable). Exactly how Microsoft plans to compete with all these sites, I really don't know. Of course, they will try to push it through their MSN network as well as their messenger and Live Mail. Still, I think they're gonna have a tough time amassing the kind of user base that Youtube boasts of today.

-Prashant.

Google acquires YouTube!

Yes! You heard me...
After all the speculation on the web recently about Google's acquisition of YouTube, it has finally been confirmed. Google will acquire YouTube for a total of $1.65 BILLION in stock. This is the biggest purchase ever made by Google!
In it's press release, Google notes that "Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community."
It is also interesting to note how Google sees this acquisition in the light of it's own competing video sharing site Google Video. The press release goes on to mention that "When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google's own fast-growing video business."
According to Techcrunch ,Yahoo might have been in the race for Youtube until the very end!
You can listen to their Press Release Conference Call by dialing 888-203-1112 in the US and 719-457-0820 internationally. You can use the confirmation code 2260624 to listen to the recordings.
Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, the Youtube founders - Chad Hurley and Steven Chen and others were present in the call. They discuss the reasons why Google decided to buy Youtube and why Youtube agreed to the offer. They also discuss technological aspects and other details of the deal. Google will integrate its ad platform into Youtube. They also take some questions from some of the callers.
This is a really big deal and can be expected to change the online video sharing scene quite a bit. It will be interesting to see how Google monetizes Youtube and how they fend off the copyright violation suits that may be expected to hit Youtube now that Google has acquired them.

Prashant.