Joshua Klein: The amazing intelligence of crows

This awesome TED presentation by Joshua Klein demonstrates how human beings can cooperate with undesired parasitic animals (rats, cockroaches, crows) to create a better living environment, both for the animals and for the human beings. Klein demonstrated the ways he cooperated with the crows.

Klein built a vending machine for crows that dispenses nuts (crow’s food). After a series of trials, he has succesfully trained the crows to insert coins into vending machine to be able to get their treats; just like human beings inserting coins to a vending machine to get their treats.

This simple yet ingenious experiment has proved that human beings can train undesired animals living in urban settings. He explained the possibilities of this unique partnership; training these animals to clean up the city, do a search and rescue mission, the possibilities are endless. The main point of this presentation is that we can create an environment where human beings can live side by side with these undesired animals with mutual benefits. We can even come up with several business ideas with this kind of thinking.

Visit TED for more mind opening, inspiring videos

Hans Rosling, statistics to ‘read’ the world

It turns out that our ideas of the world are because of preconceived ideas. Hans Rosling shows that visually beautiful statistics can change our view of the world. His website offers people the chance to see the world’s statistics, with data compiled from the United Nations database, presented in a beautifully designed software (live streaming from the internet, not download able).

Hans Rosling is a teacher of International Health to Swedish Undergraduate students. In his monumental TED talk, he teaches Global Development to the rest of the world. In this entertaining and inspiring talk, Rosling presented a new way of the general population to look at the world’s data. Data which was collected but never used because no one has ever found a way to present them in an interesting package.

OK, so what does this have to do with an entrepreneur? everything. A set of data is a place to spot opportunities. The person that can use more data in his/her decision making process will have a bigger probability to come up with better solutions, or more creative ideas. For example, Rosling’s presentation unveils that the social conditions of Vietnam in 2003 are roughly the same as USA’a social condition in 1974. If you are a true entrepreneur, you would check out USA 1974 to come up with ideas for Present World Vietnam . Because they have the same basic social conditions, they would most likely absorb the same businesses and ideas. Adjustments are to be made, of course. You could even analyze trends in the world and start projecting where your country will be! and the great thing is that we don’t have to even waste time on looking and compiling all the data!

You know what’s even more exciting? turns out that ALL the data on public statistics in the history of mankind takes the same hard disk size as Lord Of The Rings.

click here to watch the talk

or

click here to go to play with the data

The TED talks

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is one of the most important talks in the world. It brings together a legion of smart people that are passionate and dedicated to their work to talk about what they have achieved and where they are heading to in each respective field. It has hosted the likes of Al Gore, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and other intelligent people that I could not mention one by one.

It hosts a wide range of speakers from various backgrounds not limited to the three that stands for TED itself. Speakers in the field of education, motivation, science and more are featured and it can be a great source for inspiration and knowledge. Each talk is condensed in a 20 minute session. This forces the speaker to condense his thoughts in a matter that the audience will receive a lot out of that short 20 minutes. This also prevents the viewer from getting bored. To me, watching this talk is like having a one on one interview with all of these great people that tell us about all their great professions. It is by far the best resource i have stumbled upon to on the internet.

To watch, just go to

http://www.ted.com
or

http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector