David McCandless, award winning designer, writer, and author, speaks at TED on his passion for exploring data and creating meaningful visualizations that convey information in the form of a story. With a plethora of examples from his latest book, Information Is Beautiful, the talk is both facinating and inspiring. In one example he displays the carbon output from the Icelandic volcano that grounded thousands of flights over Europe in 2010. By comparing the carbon output that those flights would have produced themselves, the eruption was the first carbon-neutral volcanic event the world has seen. David posts his visualizations on his website and it is worth diving in to take a look.

Tan Le, head of Emotiv Systems talks at TED about their creation of the EPOC, a brainwave reading headset. The EPOC has won a 2010 Red Dot Award for design, and uses new algorithms to read the brainwaves of any individual. Unlike previous brainwave reading headsets which take a long time to set up and cost on the order of tens of thousands of dollars, the EPOC is available now for $299 on the Emotiv website. The applications for the device are incredibly diverse and endless as it provides the ability to control any digital device with one’s mind. Emotiv is currently seeking developers and researchers to expand upon the platform and come up with new applications for the device to usher in all new and exciting human computer interactions.

Johanna Blakley studies the impact of the fashion industry’s lack of copyright and imparts many lesson on how other creative industries could flourish with a similar regard for copyright. Johanna discusses how the fashion industry is forced to constantly innovate to keep ahead of trends, obsolescence, and build brands. The fashion industry is only one of many industries who’s work is not copyright eligible. Other industries include food, furniture, magic, jokes, cars, databases, etc… The talk is thought provoking to say the least and will provide some fodder for your next discussion on issues of copyright.

John Underkoffler’s demo at TED 2010 just scratches the surface of the gestural interface work being done by him and his team. Oblong, the company founded to commercialize the work has put out this demo video demonstrating the many interactions possible with the system they designed. The system utilizes the gestural language ‘G-Speak’ designed originally for the movie Minority Report, but with the full intention of being a robust language for real-world gestural interfaces.

John Underkoffler, MIT researcher and inventor of the user interface from the movie Minority Report, demonstrates the real technology at TED 2010. Having been working on tangible user interfaces over 15 years ago, his team was consulted to create a 3D gestural interaction language called G-Speak specifically for the movie Minority Report. The research as since been used to further gestural UI by other teams and is now making its way into the real world by industries which process large amounts of information. John predicts it could be as little as 5 years before the technology is integrated into consumer displays, with no special gloves or extra equipment needed. Perhaps it will be even sooner, given the launch of Project Natal for the Xbox this Fall.

Industrial design and human factors legend Niels Diffrient talks at TED about his quest to design the perfect chair. In full director’s commentary, Niels shares how he redesigned a chair by looking at the human body in all aspects, including the user experience of using a chair.

Why can’t furniture fit like a suit?
- Niels Diffrient

Pattie Maes, founder of the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT Media Lab, speaks at TED in depth about the project Sixth Sense in collaboration with Pranav Mistry. While the project has received far spread interest and the availability of a short video earlier, Pattie’s talk at TED has now been released. Check it out to see many more demonstrations and potential applications for the Sixth Sense technology.

Scott McCloud, author of several books including Understanding Comics, presents at TED a sketch of his life growing up and and a look into the future of comics. After a brief overview of understanding comics, the meat of the presentation lies in how the medium has moved from printed media and into fully interactive mediums such as those offered through the computer.

Evan Williams, founder of Blogger, ODEO, and most recently Twitter talks at TED about the amazing uses Twitter is seeing. With just 140 characters, but complete mobility, people are using the micro-publishing platform to broadcast their status, coordinate with others, and monitor any and every type of activity.

Bill Gross, founder of Idealab, talks about his persuit of cost effective solar energy. Using new technology and applying genetic algorithms, Bill’s team has re-used old inventions to fit modern applications.