Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Testing Apture, a blogging enhancement tool

I may end up deleting this post, but I wanted to try a few things with a blogging tool called Apture.

Apture provides the first rich communication platform allowing publishers and bloggers to easily turn flat pages of text into multimedia experiences.
So, let me try a few biblically related items and see what you think.
  • Jerusalem
  • Moses
  • Jesus
  • Gospel of Mark
  • Parables of Jesus
  • Mustard seed
  • Mark 4:30-32
Note that I have only typed the terms above, and after posting this blog, I will use Apture to link additional content.

REPORT: That was pretty easy. Click on (or hover over) any of the titles to see the variety of attached links I created. The only one that didn't really work was the "Mark 4:30-32" one, because I already have RefTagger from Logos active on my blog.
SO, if you want to easily spice up your blog with a variety of linked content, give Apture a try.

UPDATE in light of comments:
  1. You can tell the links that I created using Apture because they have a little book icon in front of them.
  2. I have noticed as well that all the links don't always show up. They do take a moment after the page is loaded, but a couple times now, the Jerusalem, Moses, and Jesus links haven't shown up.
  3. Hovering over the links will cause the popup, but there is a delay so you can pass over the link without necessarily causing the popup. Clicking anywhere outside the popup causes it to disappear.
  4. Clicking on a link in the popup will either generate another popup or open in another tab.
  5. The Apture links do not show up in my RSS reader. I use Google Reader, and I recommend the Firefox addon Better GReader. It allows you to see the actual web page without leaving your reader. Apture links do show up when this is used.
(HT: Robin Good)

6 comments:

  1. Not wanting to rain on your parade, but I find this sort of thing intensely irritating - whether it's ads, previews of the linked page, or whatever. If I need content on the Gospel of Mark, what is the likelihood that a) I'll need it when half way through your blog post, and b) that Apture will provide exactly the right thing?

    Really, don't bother :-))

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  2. Hi, Gerv. That was really just a test, but Apture only provides the framework. I personally selected each item to add and have displayed. Ie, none of the links were generated by Apture. Those maybe weren't the best examples, but I think it might be useful in some instances, especially when one wants to add multiple links to a single item.

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  3. Thanks for the post. I have been hesitant to test out Apture because it can frustrating to accidentally "roll over" a link and have a text box there you don't really want to see. Is there any way to add two lines or something to distinguish Apture links from other links? Just curious as I consider whether or not to add it to my blog.

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  4. At least for me some of the words have hyperlinks and link to content and some don't. It sounded like you intended for all of them to. If so, it doesn't come across like that (at least in Firefox).

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  5. I don't see the links in my rss reader. a cool technology though. I'd like to integrate it with moodle

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