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You need to know about TED, if you don't already. TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment and Design" and is essentially an annual conference renowned for the quality of its speakers and presentations.

You can't go to TED talks unless you're remarkably eminent - a former US president or Nobel Prizewinner, say - but it is to TED's eternal credit that you can watch hours and hours of video recordings of talks online, for free.

The subject matter is eclectic, to say the least, but the one thing that all the talks have in common is that they are utterly fascinating. It's kind of tricky to pick highlights, and far easier to just dive in and spend hours clicking around. But nevertheless, here are three talks from TED that particularly appealed to me.

The Get Up Kids are the greatest band that ever existed. To prove this, I would like to draw your attention to some very early live footage.

For as long as anyone can remember, the term "herding cats" has been used as an analogy for the challenges involved in managing developers. The implication being, of course, that developers tend to be smart, wilful, single-minded folks. Personal experience suggests this is often the case.

The analogy was reflected in the title of a book named "Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers who Lead Programmers", written by the impressively named J. Hank Rainwater. I mention it because this is a decent read for anyone who develops, or who works with developers - whether in a management capacity or not. It's not in the same league as "The Pragmatic Programmer", but I'm getting off the point now.

So anyway, I came across this video via Yahoo MySQL guru Jeremy Zawodny's blog. It's so slickly made that you're not surprised when it turns out to be an ad for a big expensive professional services company. But I liked it.