Apture Opens Access to Breakthrough 1-Click Multimedia Linking Platform
Platform enables publishers to link rich multimedia content into web pages by adding one line of code to their websites
SAN MATEO, CA, June 30, 2008 – Apture, Inc., the innovator of next-generation publishing on the web, announced today the consumer availability of its multimedia linking platform, the Apture Innovative Media Hub™, which enables publishers and bloggers to bring web pages to life with rich multimedia content by adding one line of code to their websites. Apture is providing a new class of authoring tools which provide a point and click interface to link and embed multiple content on a web page to quickly and easily create a multimedia experience for the user. Apture is taking away the cumbersome task publishers face today which requires copying and pasting codes and URLs from multiple sites to embed content onto to their pages. The Apture solution also changes the user experience by enabling the user to simply point and click to view several media without ever having to leave the web page. By integrating the Apture solution publishers will be able to add true context to what they are trying to communicate to their readers. Therefore the web page is no longer a flat piece of paper and can now be an interactive and intuitive experience where words are more powerful with the addition of multimedia content.
The Apture Innovative Media Hub exposes media buried at the bottom of today’s decentralized libraries of multimedia, publicly available content that web publishers have at their disposal but may not be aware of. Apture is pushing a paradigm shift in publishing and online communication that takes the world’s libraries and applies them in larger, more impactful ways which consequently affect the lives, knowledge and behavior of everyday people. Apture provides access to the richest multimedia on the web, including Wikipedia’s open-licensed reference library, the largest video libraries in the world (YouTube, and a long tail of other providers), Flickr’s global library of photographs, imeem’s library of user-embeddable music and video playlists, Google Maps, and more.
“The multimedia experience is seemingly endless”, explains Tristan Harris, CEO and co-founder of Apture. “With our linking platform, websites can now be enriched with background articles, images, maps, videos, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, podcasts, music and even interactive widgets in a way that’s never been possible before. Our solution will shift the way we currently publish and communicate on the web and will generate empathy and knowledge transfer, which will create fresh opportunities for distributed commerce. Our vision is to democratize these tools to enable anyone to link to the specific moment of a congressional hearing, a concert performance, a favorite moment of a television show, or feature-length film or interview. We believe that the music, sports, and political content domains are going to really affect their audiences with the audio and video that they can add to their articles on line. The readers will be able to see, feel, and hear content that they want to learn about and better understand. The user experience will not only be more informational, but also more intuitive.”
“Apture’s Media Hub gives Web publishers the tools to create a richer, more engaging experience for their readers,” said Chris Shipley, Chairman of the technology analyst firm Guidewire Group. “Rather than distracting and directing readers from the source article, Media Hub delivers rich linking that enhances the information experience at the source. As creative publishers adopt this innovative tool, we’ll see an exciting shift in information delivery.”
Product Features
The Apture Innovative Media Hub enables users to:
- Search and Discover media from the world’s best multimedia sources:
- Reference: Wikipedia, Amazon and IMDB
- Videos: YouTube, Google Video, Blip.TV, Metacafe, Veoh, ESPN, Hulu, Comedy Central, BigThink, Revver, and imeem
- Images: Flickr and Wikipedia Commons
- Music: imeem
- News: washingtonpost.com
- Documents: PDFs, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents
- Google Maps and MyMaps
- Podcasts and MP3s
- Link to specific media via a URL or embed code
- Upload images, presentations, text, and PDF documents to link directly into the page
The compelling and valuable aspect of using Apture’s Innovative Media hub is that the user has the ability to link to a specific section of a Wikipedia article or PDF document, a specific moment in a video, or a certain slide of a presentation file.
Target Audience
The key audiences for the Apture multimedia linking platform are news organizations, publishers, and bloggers who are trying to make online reading a richer, powerful and easy experience for their readers. As more and more news organizations move to the web they are constantly faced with finding new ways to improve the online reading experience. Apture also understands how the end user faces the current arduous, manual linking of URLs to phrases on a web page and believes that completely “automated” linking tools cannot get it right enough that people will find it useful. For instance, publishers don’t want to let an algorithm take editorial control of their storytelling. Publishers today understand the need with having a list of related auto-generated links in a sidebar. However, when it comes to adding links inline in the body, the publisher, as well as the blogger wants to make sure it’s the right information with the right “touch and feel”. This is where Apture’s technology comes into play.
Early Adopters
Current users of the Apture Innovative Media Hub are the WashingtonPost.com which has been using the software on two blogs since April 15, 2008 and Tim O’Rielly’s O’Reilly Radar.
Product Availability
The Apture Innovative Media Hub is available immediately, free to individual website publishers and the blogger community. To add the tool to your website log onto Apture’s website at www.apture.com. Publishers should contact publishers@apture.com for more information.
About Apture, Inc.
Apture, Inc. is an innovative and driven technology company co-founded by CEO Tristan Harris, Can Sar and Chief Engineer Jesse Young, all Stanford University Computer Science alumni. The company was formulated to create a new way of communicating on web pages. Apture, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in downtown San Mateo, California. To learn more about Apture, log on to www.apture.com.
Press and Analyst Contact:
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Be Cause PR
Tel: 310-374-2874 Cell: 310-428-7476
