ReadWriteWeb

Watching videos online is usually considered fun, but generally a waste of time. Not so with TED videos, which are uniformly interesting, educational, inspiring, and enjoyable. If you haven't spent much time (or any) checking out TED videos, you should – and to help with that, I've compiled what seem to be the very best 10 TED videos of 2011.

It was a grueling task, combing through the cream of the crop on the TED site, but somebody had to do it.

If you're one of the many people inspired, educated, informed and entertained by TED Talks videos online, you should know that the organization's web video efforts are no longer read-only.

Disruptive creative geniuses and others are now invited to upload to YouTube or Vimeo one minute audition videos for consideration by TED. Selected uploaders will be invited to travel to New York for an in-person audition to present to the world on stage in California. TED says it is looking for "the rich use of technologies, formats and styles to make an impact on an audience." The deadline for submission is in 10 days.

The mission of TED (Technology Education Design) is to promote "ideas worth spreading." And as such, there is plenty of material that entrepreneurs - folks definitely interested in spreading their ideas - can find inspiring in the recordings available on TED's website.

We've gone through the archives and hand-picked some of our favorite TED talks for startups. Granted, it's hard to select just ten to feature here out of the 700-some-odd videos available. So if your favorite isn't listed, be sure to leave us a comment.

As an avid podcast subscriber I have dozens of audio and video programs feeding into iTunes daily, but one recent submission from the TED Talks video podcast caught my eye because of its parallels to lean startups. Tom Wujec, author and fellow at Autodesk, presented at TED 2010 back in February, and his talk, "Build a tower, build a team," is now available online. Wujec conducted a team building experiment with all types of people, from business execs to kindergartners, and the results he presented were surprising, to say the least.

When Sigma Partners' Richard Dale posted a video of a random dancing guy to his Venture Cyclist blog I was skeptical. I'd seen the original video sans narration and dismissed it as a strange sociological phenomenon condensed into a quick three minute clip. Nevertheless, when the same video is narrated by MuckWork and CDBaby founder Derek Sivers, it provides some valuable leadership lessons for entrepreneurs.

Robert Scoble and Rackspace have just launched the long anticipated Building43 in an effort Scoble describes as, "helping usher businesses into 2010." Said teammate Rocky Barbanica, "Companies can gain so much insight through the people on Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook. We're hoping to help them talk and listen to their customers."

Scoble describes the project as "a community for people who are fanatical about the Internet." What exactly does that mean? Scoble gave ReadWriteWeb a demo to explain.

TED, the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference made up of short talks by brilliant people from around the world, is now making its archives available with subtitles in more than 40 languages. This is the kind of news that could make a real impact in a lot of peoples' lives.

TED Talks are brain stretching, tear-jerking, 18 minute nuggets of emerging wisdom. The new translation project is sponsored by Nokia and uses the awesome volunteer-powered translation service DotSub.

Can't make it to the TED conference or don't want to cough up the $6,000 conference membership fee? Well, we have good news for you. Starting 2009, TED will offer a live webcast as part of its associate membership program.

Experiencing the conference, which has always been by invitation only, will be much easier too with the new $995 price tag - if you're willing to participate virtually.