Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor whose final lecture inspired millions, died early Friday morning in Virginia of pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Pausch, 47, who turned the lecture into a book, said that no one would have been interested in his words of wisdom were he not a man in his 40s with a terminal illness, leaving behind a wife and three young children.

Last fall, Dr. Pausch delivered the lecture at CMU, which still posts it on its Web site. The lecture has attracted more than six million viewers…   (Read the rest of the article here)

The Apture team admired and respected Prof. Pausch, and our condolences go out to his family and loved ones.

Alexandria, VA and San Mateo, CA July 29, 2008 — Phase2 Technology and Apture, Inc. announced today a new solution to provide online publishers with an expanded toolset to enhance the user experience for publishers utilizing the Drupal content management system.  Publishers using the Drupal modules can now enjoy the added feature of Apture’s rich multimedia linking platform, which allows the user to effortlessly include rich multimedia content by simply clicking on the item to embed.

Phase2 Technology constantly seeks new and innovative tools for publishers using the Drupal CMS. It’s development of  the Drupal modules for Apture complements work in other semantic web practices including Calais, Thomson Reuters Semantic web service that enables publishers to automatically metatag content. Phase2 is nationally recognized for expertise in the implementation of non-profit, media and publishing solutions using open source technologies including Java and the Drupal content management platform.

Apture’s technology provides a powerful but easy to use WYSIWYG, interface to link several media into a web page, With Apture, a user can simply point and click to the content they wish to link.  Once the content is linked, Apture enhances the visitor experience by enabling the user to simply view the linked media in an immersive experience, without leaving the publisher’s web page.

At the heart of Apture’s technology is the innovative Apture Media Hub™ which suggests publicly available content that web publishers have at their disposal but may not be aware of. The Media Hub provides searchable access to the richest multimedia on the web, including  Wikipedia, IMDB and Amazon, videos from 11 major online providers (including YouTube, Hulu, and ESPN), Flickr’s global library of photographs, imeem’s library of user-embeddable music and video playlists from four record labels, Google Maps, and more. Publishers may also use Apture to link the exact parts of media, such as one page within a PDF or a single moment of a video . 

“The powerful combination of Drupal and Apture allows publishers to instantly add embedded content to their sites, adding greatly to the user-experience,” said Jeff Walpole, Managing Partner, Phase2technology, “Phase2 is excited to be at the forefront of helping publishers move into the new realm of linked data.”

“We are excited to have the innovative Apture Media Hub included in Drupal‘s toolset,” explains Tristan Harris, CEO and co-founder of Apture.   “By teaming with Phase2, we are providing Drupal customers with the capability to produce true multimedia webpages with ease.  This opportunity furthers our quest to educate publishers and users alike that the web does not have to be flat anymore.”

The modules can be downloaded here http://drupal.org/project/apture

About Phase2 Technology, LLC

Phase2 Technology is a leading provider of adaptable web software solutions, application development and consulting services. The company specializes in content management systems, content exchange, CRM and online publishing and community tools. We apply our unique Agile Approach methodology to every project and have particular expertise in Drupal, CiviCRM and custom Java applications. The Phase2 Technology development team has been highly active in the Drupal community for several years. For more information, go to www.phase2technology.com.

About Apture, Inc.

Apture, Inc. is an innovative technology company providing new tools for online publishers.  With its leading content injection technology, Apture is harnessing the power of the world’s multimedia libraries to build a richer and more compelling experience for end users, while building automated tools for web site publishers to enhance their content. Apture is a privately held company headquartered in downtown San Mateo, California. To learn more about Apture, log on to www.apture.com.

Media Contacts:

Tiffany Shackelford, Phase2 Technology

703 548 6050 x 100

tshackelford@phase2technology.com

Cathy Caplener, Be Cause PR

Tel: 310-428-7476

cathy@becausepr.com

We’ve listened to feedback from our UK users when you told us you wanted to be able to link to UK versions of IMDB and Amazon using Apture. Amazon.co.uk and uk.imdb.com Apture web clip parsers are now live!

Any other features you want to see implemented? Send us an email to feedback@apture.com with your suggestions.

Make your Apture enthusiasm contagious! Let your readers know that your site is Apture enhanced by proudly displaying one of the new Apture blog badges, available here: www.apture.com/badges

Want to be an Apture evangelist? Send your idea to feedback@apture.com

Apture would like to congratulate Paul Maritz on recently being named CEO of VMware.  

Prior to joining VMware, Maritz was President of Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division at EMC Corporation, founder and CEO of Pi Corporation, and a senior executive at Microsoft.  

Maritz is a graduate in Mathematics and Computer Science of the Universities of Cape Town and Natal in South Africa. Currently, he serves on the board of several privately-held software companies and also serves as Chairman of the Board of the Grameen Foundation, which supports microfinance around the world. He has an active interest in the use of technology in developing countries and in wildlife issues.

Our angel investors like Maritz have been instrumental to our success.  Best wishes to Paul at his new position. 

Last week, Deborah Gage wrote a very flattering article about Apture in the SFGate.com Technology Chronicles blog.  In A Free Tool To Make Web Pages More Interesting Gage concisely sums up Apture’s mission as well as our strategy for bringing the world’s media into the storytelling process. 

She also highlights one of our new features, the ability to link to a specific segment of a YouTube video. Time offset allows you to link to a specific segment of a video, so your audience gets the most important content delivered to them immediately.  To use time offset when linking a video, be sure to edit the link options by selecting a time at which to start your video. 

For more detailed instructions, see the Apture Help Wiki Article Apture Link to a Video in the How to Create Apture Links section from the Apture Wiki Main Page.

Have you started using time offset?  Send us an email to feedback@apture.com to have your Apture enabled blog featured on our site.

The folks at O’Reilly Media have invited us to attend this year’s FooCamp in Sebastopol, CA. We’re thrilled at the opportunity to join the interesting and diverse set of guests for a fun weekend in the Northern Bay Area. If you’re also headed to FooCamp 2008, let us know- Beau and I would love to meet you.

Tim and the gang have been using Apture on O’Reilly Radar since mid-April, some examples are here and here.

We now support Wikipedia in English, French, German, and Spanish. We got several emails asking for German language support on Monday and it’s now live. Which other languages would you like to see? Email us at feedback@apture.com!