Tag Archives: Apture

Apture toolbar: a model of popup discretion

Posted on March 14, 2010 at 9:37 am UK

aptureenhanced If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you’ll know that it’s “enhanced with Apture.” Well, you may not know that, actually. But you will have experienced Apture when you’ve clicked on certain links that show you information as elegant popup screens overlaying what you’re reading on this site instead of taking you away.

Try it for yourself on this link to see what I mean: It’s Mothering Sunday today in the UK. You should see a discreet popup with content from Wikipedia’s entry.

Feedback I get about this feature is uniformly positive. Most people say they like the elegance of the popups presenting information that’s complementary to what they’re engaged with right now on the site. It’s not the main content so they can quickly review it, dismiss it and get on with what’s caught their prime interest. They also like that the popups appear only when you click a link rather than that really irritating way of others that pop up as soon as you move your mouse over a link.

Following some months of beta testing, Apture have rolled out version 2 of their overall service to beta testers. Among the new features is a nifty customisable toolbar that’s invisible by default when you first land here and which you see at the top of your browser screen when you start scrolling down the page.

apture2toolbar

Apture’s participating at the South by Southwest Interactive event in Austin, Texas, this weekend, and there they just announced the toolbar’s general availability. They’re calling it “the Magic Search Bar.”

Usually, I’m not a big fan of toolbars that appear on websites when you visit, finding few of much redeeming value. Indeed, the first version of Apture’s toolbar during early beta testing didn’t appeal to me at all. It popped up at the bottom of the screen and was always-on by default. Pretty irritating, I thought.

The one you see now, though, is much better in terms of how and when it appears at the top of the screen, and better reflecting Apture’s overall discretion in how popup functionality works on a site (in my case, handled via a clever WordPress plugin).

It also has functionality that I’m sure many people will find useful, like the search box (which you can use to search the whole web or just this site) and share links for Facebook, Twitter and email.

So I like it and plan to post some thoughts once I’ve seen what it can do over time. What do you think of it?

And there’s more coming soon, says Apture in an email about the new features:

[…] We are putting the finishing touches on a full statistics platform for you to see what topics your readers are searching for, how many shares each of your articles are receiving and much more. Keep your eyes peeled to your inbox.

If you want to provide some useful functionality to the readers of your blog, whatever self-hosted platform you use, sign up for Apture. It’s free.

Related posts:

Enriching content with Apture

Posted on May 23, 2009 at 6:24 pm UK

apturelogoI’m a huge fan of Apture, the web service that turbo-charges links on your site to content elsewhere on the web that presents it in a discreet popup in the page you’re reading – you don’t have to leave to read, watch or listen to that content elsewhere.

I received an email the other day from Apture CEO Tristan Harris with concise info about the new version of Apture the company is about to release, including a major new feature:

[...] The big change you’ll notice is the ability to connect multiple pieces of content. In other words: one Apture link can now be connecting content from YouTube or Wikipedia and other Apture supported web content online, making Apture links more useful and your experience as a user more streamlined.

Well, it’s now released as I discovered today when I saw there’s an updated version of the Apture plugin for WordPress which I’ve updated in this blog.

The plugin’s necessary for Apture’s functionality to work on a WordPress site (the Apture service works on a wide range of blogging platforms including Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type and Drupal).

If you’re writing posts using the built-in WordPress editor, you’ll see a brand new look to the Apture embed function (known as the Apture Media Hub) along with some new features, when you invoke it.

To do that, you click the Apture icon in the WordPress editor to launch the embed popup and choose what type of content you want to embed. So, for example, I type in a search string – let’s look for something topical: the F1 Monaco grand prix 2009, perhaps, which takes place tomorrow – which produces quite a few results for me to choose from.

apture-embed2

And here’s what the actual result looks like on the video I selected:

Isn’t that simple?

Take a look also at the link above to "F1 Monaco grand prix 2009." Move your mouse over it and click. you’ll experience another example of the richness Apture brings to your content and a reference link you want to make to related content elsewhere. You can read some content here and now; if you want more, you go to the originating site. Pretty useful I think.

While I’m writing this post in the WordPress editor, I don’t usually compose or edit blog posts this way. Instead, I use Windows Live Writer which I much prefer.

While WLW doesn’t have the Apture embed functionality, any links I include in the content I’m writing will have the relevant Apture functionality once published – I just don’t get the granular levels of control that the embed tool gives. (Wonder if anyone would consider writing an Apture plugin for Windows Live Writer. That would be fantastic.)

I think Apture is an excellent enhancement to websites, not only blogs, and enriches your overall user experience. Take a look at these examples. Check this one, too: screenshot.

Worth trying if you haven’t already.