If you have broadband it’s absolutely worth keeping an eye on the TED Talks, maybe even subscribing to the feed in iTunes.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.

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).

The talks available through iTunes are almost always interesting, thought-provoking, engaging. The theme is generally about how to make the world a better place.

Speakers have included not only many people I hadn’t heard of before, but famous people such as Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Billy Graham or Al Gore.

Dave Eggers spent 25 minutes (an 85Mb file) showing and explaining in a very entertaining way how and why he set up an after school homework programme offering one-on-one tutoring to local kids. He explains how they got off to a bad start — no kids attended the programme for weeks — and then how it became not only successful, but such a success the programme spread to other cities, other countries and broader concepts.

With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world

Visit : Dave Eggers makes his TED Prize wish: Once Upon a School | Video on TED.com.

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Derek Miller, an Internet friend and musician in Vancouver, wrote about a new Flickr service — Flickr does video. I haven’t been able to test it out yet, but since Derek said everything I would say anyway, I bring you his entire post, with permission:

The new video sharing features of the formerly photo-only site Flickr are different: the designers obviously thought a lot about how to implement video without just cloning how YouTube and everyone else does it.

The key thing is that videos uploaded to Flickr must be less than a minute and a half long, and no bigger than 150 MB. That’s a limitation, but also a gift. It forces you to think about what to upload, and if you have a longer video, to edit it down to its essence.

My first video upload there is a good example. I had to take a video of my band that was already only a few minutes long and make it even shorter. I had to cut out non-licensed music and any other extraneous bits. In the end it’s only one minute, but it still gets the point of our act across, even without any singing at all.

I think the time limit will generate some creativity in the Flickr community, as well as avoiding those interminable videos that take forever to get to the point. Even if a video is bad, you’ll only have to waste 90 seconds on it. We’ll see what happens within the well-imagined constraints.

[Via Penmachine words music comment: Flickr does video.]

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m-net writes about findings from recent research on how Kiwis use the Internet. We’re using it a lot, and we’re becoming increasingly active (rather than passive) users. We enjoy connecting with people.

In its first ever study of Consumer Generated Media (CGM), Nielsen Online has found that the majority of those surveyed had engaged in some sort of CGM activity, with 84 per cent of Australian and 88 per cent of New Zealand internet users sharing content such as photos, links and video in the past year. A similar proportion - 83 per cent in Australia and 88 per cent in New Zealand - consumes CGM content.

The report also found that once consumers are familiar with CGM, they progress to more advanced activities such as editing and commenting on content (77 per cent of Australians and 78 per cent of New Zealanders), as well as creating online content such as uploading videos and music (69 per cent of Australians and 76 per cent of New Zealanders).

“We are seeing a revolution in the way in which consumers here in the Pacific and around the world are interacting, communicating, creating and nurturing personal and professional relationships,” says Melanie Ingrey, Asia Pacific market research director for Nielsen Online.

[Via : Kiwis love Web 2.0, Aussies lead in music sharing - m-net - ICT business news and information.]

Is your organisation making the most of this very human drive to share what we find? Do you make it easy for visitors to your site and members of your organisation to link to and pass on information, photos and links? Do you encourage them to share? Do you encourage them to interact with you, to leave comments, to contribute material?

One of the benefits of blogging is that blogs are usually set up to allow comments. They let visitors communicate both with you and with one another. Could your organisation use a blog?

Could you add photos to Flickr or videos to YouTube? Can people interact with your group on Facebook or MySpace?

What are you doing to add more two-way communication through the web?

If your group is doing something interesting, let us know about it in the comments.

Update: My thanks to Laurel Papworth who figured out where to find the stats:

now we have stats

[Via Laurel Papworth - Online Communities - Australia and Global: Australians DO Blog - number of Australian bloggers.]

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