Purpose TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design, www.ted.com/) Talks has been one of the most popular video systems. However, the current TED Talks system expressed its inquired videos as in a two-dimensional (2D) table, which is inconvenient for searching the relationships among videos and tags. This study converts the TED Talks table into a sphere by using optimization techniques to help users search for preferred videos. Design/methodology/approach There are five phases in this study as follows. Phase 1: Reorganize data of 36 tags and 108 videos; Phase 2: Allocate tags on the TED sphere; Phase 3: Allocate videos on the TED sphere; Phase 4: Develop an online interactive TED retrieval system; and Phase 5: Perform survey and evaluation. Findings One survey demonstrated that the TED Talks sphere is more convenient for searching videos, as it is more user-friendly because of its graphical user interface, more convenient to use, more useful for retrieving information and can facilitate a more responsive search for users’ preferred videos. Research limitations/implications The numbers of tags and videos able to be displayed on a sphere is limited by the capacity of an optimization software and hardware. Practical implications The proposed sphere system can be used by a large number of users of TED Talks groups. Social implications This sphere systems can also be applied to other fields which use 2D forms to display the relationships among objects. Originality/value This study uses an optimization method to convert a 2D form into a 3D sphere to highlight the relationships among numerous objects.

Recently, National Geographic published a special bookazine titled Nature's Best Remedies. This bookazine reorganized nature's remedies as a therapeutic table for treating ailments. The table provides considerable knowledge but is inconvenient to use. This study converts the therapeutic table into a therapeutic sphere by using optimization techniques. In the therapeutic sphere, similar ailments are clustered together, and remedies related to specified ailments are allocated on the sphere. Two surveys demonstrated that, compared with the therapeutic table, the therapeutic sphere is more convenient to use, more efficient for making queries, and more useful for healthcare as well as more intuitive. The proposed therapeutic sphere system can be accessed at http://140.113.73.198/gbball/examples/medeng2.aspx.