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Seesmic out, Apture in

by Dennis Howlett on August 16, 2008

I’m a huge fan of getting as much content into AccMan as possible. Sometimes however, those endeavours come to nothing – usually because it is way too early in the cycle for people to latch onto them as a good thing and sometimes because they are just not that appropriate.

This week’s casualty is Seesmic. Almost no-one leaves video comments on this blog yet the plug-in sucks load time. That’s a pity as I really like the idea of video comments. Sadly I appear to be in a minority of (nearly) one. So I’ve disabled it.

Apture on the other hand is a wee gem. It’s a plug-in like any other. It looks at the page and determines whether there are words that relate to content out on the web. This might be reference text, video or images. It then places a small ‘w’ icon next to the word or selected text and when you hover over it, allows you to see what additional content I’ve added from these media.

For example, in the previous post, I referenced Web 2.0 which brought up a Wikipedia definition which I added and a selection of images and videos. I’ve included a couple of videos. It also included some news items but I wasn’t that interested in those pieces and they were not terribly relevant. that along with Zemanta are two of my favourite plugs because they add value to those who come here.

Apture is completely unobtrusive and is only activated when a reader hovers over the appropriate part of the site. Enjoy.

Endnote: Hat tip to Neville Hobson. He tweeted an intriguing link title for a blog post and it was there that I noticed he is using it. OnDemand Beat’s Ameed Taylor however reckons the service has a tendency to go down a lot so I’ll be using Zemanta first for other contextual links.

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Tagged as: apture, optimization, seesmic, wordpress

  • I don't even have a webcam. :p

    I do have two ways to do digital recordings, but then I would have to go and upload them and jump through hoops... not to mention set up a mini-recording studio. Although I guess the poster from Metric's "Live it Out" album would be an appropriate backdrop in a pinch.

    Nah, typing here is easier. :)
  • Thanks for the great post about Apture. I just wanted to clarify what you said in one of your paragraphs describing how Apture works:

    "It looks at the page and determines whether there are words that relate to content out on the web. This might be reference text, video or images. It then places a small ‘w’ icon next to the word or selected text and when you hover over it, allows you to see what additional content I’ve added from these media."

    To clarify that, the blogger or publisher selects the word it wants to link, then does a search for related media, and finally links in content that he finds relevant. So instead of auto generated Wikipedia links, the viewer will see hand selected content which could include Flickr images, a google map, music from imeem, and lots more. The viewer will see an icon in front of the link that shows the type of media that will pop up; a 'w' for Wikipedia, a camera for images, a speaker for audio, and so on.

    Again, thanks for the great post! Do you have any questions about how to use Apture? Shoot me an email at theresa@apture.com

    Cheers,
    Theresa and the Apture team
  • too bad will try to make something more useful next time, do you get many comments from FF?
  • @Theresa - thanks.
    @Loic - it's an adoption issue. It seems my kind of people are not ready for this form of interaction. It's definitely not about the service. re: FF - it depends. Some posts get a lot of FF comments, many don't.
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