Language expert Wilfred Funk was one of the first to study highly successful men and women to determine what they have in common. What he discovered was that they all have the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. Since then, many studies have shown the same thing. In fact, members of the “speaking” professions – lawyers, politicians, professional speakers, salespeople, and entertainers – are among the highest paid. There appears to be a high correlation between word power and earning power. The ability to speak, to persuade, and to keep an audience’s attention is well rewarded.

What about you? Have you been sabotaging your own success because you feel that speaking in front of a group is something you would rather die than do? If so, it is time to do yourself a favour and learn the skills that can change your life.

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It was my very first meal of a tour with Joshua Bell, a violinist you may have heard of. Now, a pianist has a function, which is to play too loud while waving his/her head around expressively. And pasta has a function too: it’s supposed to serve as a canvas or frame for delicious sauce. But this flaccid frame simply refused to cooperate.

At TED (short for technology-education-design), the talks are just 3, 6, 9, 12 or 18 minutes in length--that's it.  And while the TED.com website includes all sorts of features for these amazing speeches, from transcriptions and translations to video and subtitles, this week it added another great tool for speakers: The ability to search TED talks by their length. 

If you plan to be a frequent speaker, developing the skill of speaking within set time frames should be on your training list.  You may want to start by checking out the 3-minute speeches to see just how much can be fit into three minutes to good effect...then tackle one of your topics that way.  Move on to the 6- or 9-minute talks to see what the speakers added in those frames, then adjust your talk accordingly.  By the time you reach the 18-minute talks, I guarantee you'll find them ample.  (If only more speakers capped themselves at 18 minutes or below, the world would have more appreciative audiences.)

Don't have a topic of your own yet? Go ahead and practice with these speeches, and use them to practice pacing, cadence, tone and timing.  TED makes it easy with all its many tools, including this very welcome one.

Thanks to Denise Graveline for recommending this innovative way to practice speech timing.

Steve Jobs got a new liver, the rest of us got an easier way to watch Hulu in bed, and the health-care industry just may have gotten the big break it needed to launch into the 21st century. Following his hush-hush surgery last spring, it's easy to imagine the colossus of Cupertino, Calif., staring at the ceiling tiles in his hospital room and wishing for a way to hop online without having to bother with a laptop.

It's also no stretch to picture him watching doctors, nurses and orderlies peck away at a bevy of poorly designed, intermittently integrated and just plain ugly devices and thinking there had to be a better way.

So while the rest of the world texts, tweets and generally fawns over the thing, that's muted compared with the reception the iPad is getting in the health-care universe.

Well, I've got doctors who show no apparent interest in using a computer and a cardiologist who blows me away every time I see him come into the examination room with a tablet computer--I want to know exactly what he's doing with that device and how it's integrated into his practice. I'm frustrated that I can't use a computer to communicate directly with my doctors, frustrated that there's no standard for sharing medical information--every practice seems to have a different kind of patient questionnaire that makes initial visits harder than they need to be. (It really bugs me that most practices I've visited insist on a questionnaire but don't make it available on the web ahead of time, so most initial visits are more time consuming than they need to be. Since I've got use of only one hand, it would be a great convenience to me o have a form I culd fill out on a computer.)  It would be great if I could keep (and update) my basic information in one place and have it available in a second for me and a doctor. Here's something to look forward to in medicine and tehnology.