These ten were distinguished as the best from the three most recent TED conferences. There are two that are intriguing to me: the Seadragon/Photosynth demo by Blaise Aguera y Arcas and the touchscreen demo from Jeff Han (blogged here).

What I like so much about the Photosynth idea is its involvement of the personal contributor in a meaningful grand project (utilizing the Web 2.0 user value-added dynamic which is becoming more typical as the web ages away from anarchy and toward connectivity). I also saw this Photosynth stuff mentioned in a recent Wall Street Journal article (08.21.08, by Walter Mossberg) when I was waiting around in my bank the other day. The online version of Photosynth is there to be played with, but there is still some foibles to be shaken out, such as not having completely “synthy” photos – ones that for whatever reason don’t entirely work with the 3D walk-through system.