Just In Tom

The iPhone comes to Malawi

I'm here in Malawi visiting William Kamkwamba and my friends at Baobab Health Partnership: Gerry Douglas, the founder; Soyapi Mumba, Oliver Gadabu, Alex Gondwe, Mwatha Bwanali; and when he returns September 3rd, Mike McKay,

I brought my iPhone with me and the guys were so excited to play with it. Soyapi figured it all out instantly as is his nature; after all, he is the first Twitterer in Malawi, and certainly one of the first in Africa. Then I showed them that it worked on their wifi network and they instantly tried their HIV patient care software which normally operates on touch-screen-retrofitted NetPliance I-Openers running Linux and Firefox. The touch screen terminals allow caregivers to give better care to more patients than using paper charts.

HUGE Smiles all around... Not only did it work perfectly, but the interface actually looked better than its already very high standard, thanks to Safari on the iPhone interface toolbox. All the touch screen buttons worked just like they do on the full size terminal.  It also works great on a Nokia N800 Internet Wifi tablet that Gerry brought from his the other half of the year home in Pittsburgh, although that requires a stylus.

Then Gerry came in and saw the app on the iPhone and the pictures speak for themselves.

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Mwatha, Soyapi (with iPhone), and Oliver

TED Talks launch today

I've been working on TEDTalks for the last couple of weeks and they finally went live today.  Check them out!

TEDTalks bow today Tuesday
Today for the first time, we're releasing some of the best TED talks to the world. They're available as a podcast series, TEDTalks, in both audio and video, at http://www.ted.com/tedtalks and http://tedblog.typepad.com. We're launching with six talks, and will add more weekly. They'll be fully searchable, and absolutely FREE.

This is a big moment for us: Until now, TED has been an invitation-only experience, limited to 1,000 people each year. But these talks are so powerful, we felt they deserved a much wider audience... So we partnered with BMW to bring them out to the world. 

To ensure the widest possible audience, we're publishing TEDTalks across multiple formats (Flash Video, QuickTime, MP4 video, MP3 audio) and locations (TED.com, TEDBlog (via VideoEgg), iTunes, GoogleVideo, RSS feeds...). They're being released under a creative commons license, so non-commercial sites are free to re-post them, in their entirety. Simple instructions for this will be included in each entry on the TEDBlog.

About the sponsor:
Thanks to the support of BMW, we're able to release these talks for free, and distribute them widely. We've really been struck by the passion with which they got behind the idea. Partner-wise, they're a perfect fit, both because of their history of innovation (Chris Bangle, head of BMW Group Design, was a 2002 TED speaker) and their legacy of supporting ground-breaking media (think BMW Films).

About the speakers:
TEDTalks will launch with 6 inspired presentations: Al Gore's sage advice on living a carbon-neutral life, Hans Rosling's inspired interpretation of global statistics, Ken Robinson's vision for an education system that values creativity; Majora Carter's commitment to environmental justice; Tony Robbins'  roadmap for reaching your potential; and David Pogue's software-inspired show tunes. We'll add more talks weekly, pulling primarily from TED2006 and TEDGlobal, but also dipping into previous years.

About the search:
Powered by Podzinger's speech-recognition technology, it allows you to find keywords or phrases within individual TEDTalks, and then play the video from the moment they're mentioned. (Try searching for "South Bronx" or "carbon neutral"). The transcripts generated aren't perfect — punctuation is often missing, and many of the small connecting words are lost in translation — but they're extremely effective for keyword searching and precision playback.

About the production:
The TEDTalks video series was created in-house, and edited specifically for the micro-screen (closer shots, faster cuts...) Our audio series was produced with podcast pioneers WNYC/New York Public Radio, and is also edited specifically for the medium, with crisp edits that cut out extraneous elements (prolonged introductions, AV problems, commentary on visual information the listener can't see, etc)

About the goal:
I think it's worth emphasizing that our goal here isn't to profit or even to drive interest in the conference (TED2007 is already sold out), but simply to find the widest possible audience for these talks.

About our partners:
Along with BMW, we partnered with Adobe, Apple, Clickability, Feedburner, Google, Podzinger, StreamGuys, Typepad, VideoEgg, and WNYC (New York Public Radio) to bring TEDTalks to life.

Wish us luck!

Tom

As Narcissus said to the Pond, "It's all about me."

Tom Rielly is Partnership Director at TED Conferences, LLC based in New York City.

Rielly is best known as the Founder and former CEO of PlanetOut.com, which joined forces with Gay.com to create the largest gay and lesbian online company with over 5 million monthly customers. Based in San Francisco, the company is now called PlanetOut, Inc.  PlanetOut went public on the NASDAQ (Quote) in 2004. In 2006, PlanetOut added The Advocate, Out, OutTraveler magazines and RSVP Vacations to its media and travel holdings.

Rielly was most recently CEO of Griot Digital, LLC, a marketing, interactive and startup consulting firm. Clients include Canyon Ranch, TED Conferences, and PumpOne.

Rielly is also an accomplished actor, stand-up comic and satirist. His original satires, which close the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conferences, receive standing ovations year after year. His deadpan delivery combines cerebral musings, wordplay, original props, and classic slapstick, including concussion-inducing pratfalls, bottles of olive oil drenching his head, or a dance duet with an inflatable lowlife woman.

His "warm up acts" have included evangelist Billy Graham and former Vice-President Al Gore. In 1980 he played the role of Reissman in the feature film, My Bodyguard.   He also performed at the TYPO conference twice, the largest graphic design conference in Europe, and at YPO University in Florence, as well as the Aspen Design Conference.

In 2005 Rielly served as Executive Producer for Jenni Olson's first feature film The Joy of Life, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It will be released on DVD in Summer, 2006.

"Another perfect film." -indieWIRE
"Hypnotic. " -The Village Voice
"Unforgettable." -San Francisco Examiner
"One of the most sensuous documentaries you will ever see." -The East Bay Express

Before that, Rielly was Executive Vice-President of Acronym Media, a high end direct marketing boutique agency that helps clients acquire customers through Search Engine Marketing. Clients include SAP Worldwide, Sirius Satellite Radio, AFL-CIO, DNC, The New York Gay and Lesbian Community Center, Lydall, the John Kerry documentary film Going Upriver, and Euro RSCG, the third largest advertising holding company.

PlanetOut was the recipient of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Award for Outstanding Interactive Media, The Webby People’s Voice Award for best community site, The AOL member’s choice award, and the Microsoft Outstanding Content Provider Award. It received Yahoo! Internet Life magazine’s Best of the Best ’98 and ’99.

In addition, Rielly received a medal for Outstanding Innovation in Information Technology from the ComputerWorld/Smithsonian Awards. PlanetOut was named one of Upside’s 100 hottest private companies, and Rielly was named one of the Upside 100 most influential people in Silicon Valley.

PlanetOut and Rielly have been the subject of stories in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Out, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Advocate, and Advertising Age, among others.

In 1991 Rielly worked with Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, MPH of the San Francisco Board of Health to reach out to gay men in AOL chat rooms who were contracting syphilis in alarming numbers. Their collaboration was featured on the front page of the New York Times as well as many other media outlets, and then published by Dr. Klausner in the New England Journal of Medicine. PlanetOut, Inc. continues to offer education about STDs accessible easily in all its chat rooms.

Previously, Rielly served as President and CEO of PlanetOut and held senior marketing and sales posts at SuperMac, Radius, Farallon and the Voyager Company.

Rielly is also creator, co-founder and board member of Digital Queers an influential non-profit made up of technology professionals who raise money to equip lesbian and gay civil rights organization with modern computer technology. DQ also trains activists nationwide how to use computer and online technology in their work. Since its founding in 1992, DQ has raised over a half million dollars in cash, goods and services for these organizations.

DQ merged with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) on January 7, 1999. The combined organization will continue DQ’s work, with DQ making up GLAAD’s Silicon Valley Wing.

DQ and Rielly have been subject of stories in the New York Times, Out Magazine, and The Advocate among others.

Rielly also co-founded the Yale Macintosh Users’ Group (1984); and the New Media Centers program which helps college campuses establish New Media learning centers on their campuses. (1994)

Rielly writes occasional articles for The Advocate & I.D. magazine and contributed a chapter, with Karen Wickre, to Out in All Directions: A Gay and Lesbian Almanac (Warner Books, 1996) and frequently speaks at industry events.

Rielly was educated at Georgetown University, Yale University and the Sorbonne, but dropped out to enter the nascent Macintosh industry. He enjoys politics, gay and lesbian organizing, philanthropy, filmmaking, movies, DVD’s, science fiction, hiking and all things French and Italian. He lives in Manhattan and New York's Fire Island Pines.