TED Mobile is the mobile app version of the TED Website, allowing you to watch its video content on your smartphone. You may know about the TED conferences (TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, and Design”); TED’s motto is “Ideas Worth Sharing,” and the nonprofit group posts videos of speakers whose new ideas are transforming (or may transform) the world.
You can browse through TED’s videos in different ways; the videos are organized by Theme, Talks, and Tags. You can also run keyword searches. However, anyone who has an Android phone with a keyboard slider will be disappointed to discover that when you try to type in a search query with the keyboard, the screen will not flip to the horizontal orientation. This is a little distracting, but only a minor problem.
Theme allows one to view a series of talks organized around a particular theme. Talks, on the other hand, allows you to browse individual talks. You can also search by Tags, that is, categories such as business, culture, economics, and so forth. One thing to keep in mind when browsing through the talks is that when you reach the end of the ten or so entries the browser presents you, to select the next page you must go to the menu.
It’s too bad that a “next page” button isn’t at the bottom, but this is only a minor inconvenience. When you find a speaker or topic you’re interested in, clicking on the entry will bring up a short summary about the presentation and the speaker. Then, if you wish to watch the video, you merely tap your screen. If you wish to add this video to your favorites, you can do so by going to the menu.
Although sometimes it can take a while for the videos to load up, the video and audio quality of the clips all seem to be uniformly excellent. I didn’t experience any problems with stuttering after the videos loaded. Because of the quality of the videos, it is safe to say that if you are interested in watching video clips of today’s innovative thinkers on your phone, then this app is for you.