As will Kara Swisher, who’s been going to TED since the dawn of time — check out her February 2000 coverage of “The Billionaires’ Dinner” — though she assures me that the yearly dose of techno-optimism is enough to drive her to drink bottled water and drive an SUV.

Meanwhile, I expect to report back to you on some of the most interesting sessions before they are released online and shoot to viral video fame.

TED curates a potpourri of talks and performances on technology, entertainment and design (which is where its name comes from). In recent years, the conference has gotten larger and gained fame through the release of talks online, and the facilitation of independently organized “TEDx” events around the world.

This year’s TED theme is “Full Spectrum,” which is pretty vague, but it looks like there will be some trends around urban planning, robots and climate change.

At the risk of extracting one part from the greater whole, I delved into the program and pulled up some of the talks that look to be more techie, at least on the surface. Here they are:

Sarah Parcak is a “space archeologist” who uses satellite images to find archeological sites.

Peter Diamandis is chairman of the X Prize and Singularity University, and just wrote the book “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think.”

Henrik Scharfe studies people’s interactions with robots, with the help of one that looks just like him.

You may remember DARPA Director Regina Dugan as the surprise hit of our D9 conference last year.

Jack Choi is CEO of Anatomage, which makes 3-D anatomy-imaging software.

Donald Sadoway is an MIT professor who has made a battery using “liquid metal.”

Vijay Kumar is a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies multi-robot formations.

T. Boone Pickens is the oil baron who now supports alternative sources of energy.

Reid Hoffman is perhaps the TED speaker best-known to ATD readers, for his work founding and running LinkedIn, and now as an investor at Greylock Partners and co-author of “The Start-up of You.”

Former Microsoft marketer Lior Zoref is delivering “the first-ever crowdsourced TED talk.”

Jen Pahlka is founder of Code for America. She’ll also be keynoting SXSW in a couple weeks.

Frank Warren created the community confession blog PostSecret.

MIT professor Sherry Turkle wrote “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.”

David Kelley founded IDEO and Stanford’s D School.

John Hodgman is a PC. His latest book is “That Is All.”

Jared Ficklin works at frog design and visualizes music.

Bill Nye is the Science Guy.

Cesar Kuriyama edits together one second of video from every day of his life.

Whew, that’s already a lot — and I’m sure there will be offstage demos and shenanigans to write about, too. Let me know what you want to hear about most.

RELATED POSTS:

• Put Down the Phone and Learn to Be Alone (And to Listen), Says Sherry Turkle at TED
• A TED View of the Future: Hypersonic Gliders, Liquid Batteries and Flying Robots
• At TED, Susan Cain Tells Business Leaders: Honor Thy Introverts
• TED Tech Preview: Robots, Crowdsourcing and Bill Nye

But it’s also a pretty easy problem to solve. Ask John “I’m a PC” Hodgman, who stopped by “The Daily Show” to explain last night.

Or, perhaps $600 million. Depends on which estimate you want to use for T-Mobile’s annual marketing outlay.

The first, which doesn’t include Internet advertising, comes from Nielsen. The second, which presumably does, comes from WPP’s Kantar Media.

In any case, T-Mobile and parent Deutsche Telekom spend a lot on advertising each year, but not nearly as much as their peers. Nielsen pegs AT&T’s annual spend–just for wireless ads–at $896 milllion; Sprint at $616 million and Verizon at $979 million.

It’s important to note that AT&T will end up replacing some of T-Mobile’s ad spend, but not all of it. As Shira Ovide notes, cutting down on duplicative advertising is part of the rationale for the deal.

Nielsen provided me with a detailed estimate which breaks down how much of each of the carriers spend per year, on every category but Web spending and “spot” TV buying (ads bought ad hoc instead of in advance).

You can see the whole thing at the bottom of this post but if you’re impatient: Not surprisingly, the carriers spend the most, by far, on broadcast TV, followed by cable TV, Spanish-language TV, and then local newspapers.

As far as Web ad spend goes: The carriers spend a lot online, too. But tracking for that stuff is much more hit and miss. Nielsen used to provide a guesstimate for display ads, but doesn’t right now. When they did, though, AT&T and Verizon were frequently in their top 10 lists.

One other note: Lots of people are passionate about Carly Foulkes, the T-Mobile spokesmodel who wore a pink and white dress in all those ads. But I’m the kind of guy who was always more interested in the “AT&T”/John Hodgman guy. Go figure.

It turns out the actor’s name is Dan Bakkedahl, and he used to be on the “The Daily Show”, and I was wondering what he thought about this. Alas, “T-Mobile would like Dan to wait to do any interviews,” his manager informs me via e-mail.

OK. But as soon as he’s ready, he’s got an open forum here…

Wireless Carrier Ad Spend July09-June10

These are the best MacBooks we’ve ever made, says Schiller, noting the machine’s new unibody design. Schiller announces new version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Like its 17-inch counterpart, the 15-inch features Apple’s (AAPL) new lithium-polymer battery. “Nicest display we’ve ever put in a notebook,” says Schiller. The machine also features a built-in SD slot geared towards photographers. It’s also the fastest notebook Apple has ever made. 3.06 GHZ. Nice. So happy I bought my new machine two months ago. Onward. Up to 500 GB hard drive. Starts at $1699. Apple is updating the new 17-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pro as well. Similar configurations. Both devices feature that same SD slot. Built-in backlit keyboard. 13 is tricked out with a new Firewire 800 port. 13-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1199. All three machines ship today. “This is the most affordable line-up we’ve ever had,” says Schiller.

Check out our WWDC 2009 Full-Coverage special feature for more WWDC news.

These are the best MacBooks we’ve ever made, says Schiller, noting the machine’s new unibody design. Schiller announces new version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Like its 17-inch counterpart, the 15-inch features Apple’s (AAPL) new lithium-polymer battery. “Nicest display we’ve ever put in a notebook,” says Schiller. The machine also features a built-in SD slot geared towards photographers. It’s also the fastest notebook Apple has ever made. 3.06 GHZ. Nice. So happy I bought my new machine two months ago. Onward. Up to 500 GB hard drive. Starts at $1699. Apple is updating the new 17-inch and 13-inch MacBook Pro as well. Similar configurations. Both devices feature that same SD slot. Built-in backlit keyboard. 13 is tricked out with a new Firewire 800 port. 13-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1199. All three machines ship today. “This is the most affordable line-up we’ve ever had,” says Schiller.

Check out our WWDC 2009 Full-Coverage special feature for more WWDC news.