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Saturday, March 21, 2009

How to Create Blog Interactivity with Apture

Just recently I discovered Apture, a nifty add-in that truly makes my humble little blog a better experience for visitors. I love it because it's so sticky: simple to install, unexpected for first time viewers, and concrete in its elaboration of words, phrases and concepts.

So what is it, exactly? Apture provides inconspicuous little icons (like the one you just read past) which (when paused upon with the cursor) will provide additional content (in this case, a brief blurb on the word Apture). Of course, if the reader doesn't want the additional media, he or she can blissfully read past the icons. And regardless of whether or not the reader wishes to hear the Beatles classic Hey, Jude when I reference it, the application resides in the text unobtrusively.

So if you're a blogger, definitely check out this application. It may just give you a reaction as enthusiastic as Meg Ryan's in When Harry Met Sally. And, as always, email me if you'd like to share your own ideas!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Keith, thanks for the post!

This is Tristan from Apture, just wanted to let you know we now have a browser plugin you can use to add links pre-publish (inside blogger's editing environment). Check it out: http://www.apture.com/plugin/

Anonymous said...

That is amazing. I especially enjoyed the Beatles' song. Brings back old times.

jpizelo said...

What a great tool. I am thinking about using a blog for my students to use this would definitely be a great tool to use for posting notes and improving prompts.

Keith Schoch said...

I'm glad you all see the usefulness. I especially love that docs and pdfs will open up with Scribd without leaving the blog page (although I didn't demo that in my post).

And thanks Tristan for the heads-up regarding the pre-publish plug-in, although I personally like seeing the links appear on the "read view" page myself.

TeachHUB said...

Amazing! The video is unbelievable. I wish they had that for reading guides (would help me finally get through Ulysses. It's my Everest).

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