Background
TED was born in 1984, and since 1990, the TED Conference has been an annual gathering to aimed at promoting “Ideas worth spreading” on the fields of technology, entertainment, and design (that’s why it’s called TED), inspiring and motivating those who could attend the —back then, — invitation-only event.
As time passed, the presentations started including topics from many more disciplines, expanding beyond the original trio of technology, entertainment, and design. They began to cover subjects such as science, global issues, education, business, health and more.
Wanting to share the innovative and inspiring ideas presented at the conference with a wider, global audience, TED launched the TED Talks website in 2006. There, you can find a selection of the best content in the form of short talks or presentations recorded at the conferences, for free.
About the app
TED’s official app lets you access thousands of TED Talks on the go. These are some main features of the app:
- Access to TED videos and TED podcasts: keep learning in any format you want.
- User friendly interface: navigating the app is simple and intuitive.
- Browsing made easy: find inspiration sorting videos by topics, language, or duration.
- Offline watching: save videos to watch them when you don’t have internet connection.
- Personalized recommendations: the app will suggest videos according to your interests and viewing history.
- Watch with subtitles: more than 100 languages available to watch subtitled TED Talks.
- Interact with the videos: you can like, save, share or download your favorite talks.
Supported devices
The TED app is available for many devices, including:
- iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) through the Apple Store,
- Android devices through Google’s Play Store,
- Amazon Fire tablets through the Amazon Appstore,
- Smart TVs and streaming devices, such as Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV.
Getting started
As soon as you download and open the app, you’re asked to answer two questions, multiple-choice style: “What interests you?” (Technology? Nature? Personal growth? The list goes on), and “What are you looking for?” (Fresh insights and knowledge, a new perspective, a glimpse into the future, to name but a few).
Next, you’re prompted to sign in. You can also skip this step, but it’s advisable you do it to make the most of the personalized TED experience and be able to sync across devices.
The app’s dashboard
Once in the Home screen, you’ll see an assortment of Recommendations, Newest Talks, Trending, Editor’s Picks and more from which you can choose and watch right away. If you have something in mind already, you can use the Search box or Browse through the library and sort videos by topic, language, or duration. Feel like watching something you haven’t thought of? With the Surprise Me! Button you’ll be shown a random video that otherwise you wouldn’t have come across.
If you head to the My Library section, you’ll see all the videos or Podcast episodes you’re yet to finish watching or listening, together with the videos you’ve saved and the ones you’ve downloaded to watch offline.
Finally, the Podcasts section lets you go through TED Podcasts such as TED Talks Daily, TED Climate, and Design Matters with Debbie Millman. Each episode shows its name, length, and release date.
The bottom line
TED’s official app provides a great opportunity to explore a wealth of inspirational, educational and engaging videos directly from your mobile device, and totally free of charge. While the app is great, there’s still room for improvement, with some features that could benefit from some fine-tuning.
For instance, the search function is rather inconvenient as it only displays text matches, which may not always be the most relevant results. In general, you’re better off filtering videos by topic, but again, the user experience would be even better if filtering by date or event were possible.
Also, the fact that videos cannot be commented on directly from the app makes it a rather passive experience. It’d be great to share your views with other TED enthusiasts, without needing to leave the app and do it on YouTube. Anyway, let’s trust the TED’s developer team will look into these opportunities for improvement. In the meantime, we can still expand our world with the app as it is.