November 10th, 2011

Google Buys Contextual Rich News Browsing Startup Apture To Beef Up Chrome

apture-1

Google has acquired Apture, a startup that brings instantaneous search to content on the web, we’ve confirmed with both companies. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Launched in 2008, Apture has raised $4.6 million from Beau Vrolyk, Paul Maritz, Steve Taylor, Clearstone Venture Partners

Co-founded by Tristan Harris and Can Sar, Apture developes ‘Apture Highlights,’ a browser extension that aims to plug the “search leak” that the company says is taking place with content on the web. Apture highlights a search leak as when a users is reading content, wants more information about a keyword or phrase and then opens another browser tab to search for the information on Google, Bing or Yahoo. The downside for the content publisher is that the user disengages with the actual content by leaving the page. → Read More

June 29th, 2011

The Web Is Full Of Hyperlinks Waiting To Happen, Apture HotSpots Makes Them Happen

While hyperlinks are a fundamental backbone of the web, they’re also a bit odd. After all, hyperlinking is for the most part a subjective process. Someone decides if and when to link to something. It nudges the web from a completely open story into more of a choose your own adventure one. But what if we could change that?

That’s what HotSpots, a new feature from Apture aims to do. Most of you will know Apture as the contextual add-on service that both publishers (through simple JavaScript) and web surfers (through browser extensions) use to augment their web experience with information. What you may not know is that thanks to this service, Apture has access to some really good data. A lot of it. And the key part of that data shows exactly what users highlight when they browse webpages. → Read More

March 9th, 2011

Apture Adds Former About.com CEO Peter Horan To Board; Signs Up More Publishers

We’re big fans of Apture, a startup that brings instantaneous search to content on the web. Today, Apture is announcing a new board member and new publishers using its plug-in. As we’ve written in the past, ‘Apture Highlights’ plugs the “search leak” that is taking place with content on the web. The feature allows you to highlight any word or phrase on a page and instantly bring up search results in a window. The startup brings results from 60-plus sources including YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and more for extra context around content.

Apture is adding former About.com CEO Peter Horan to its board of directors. Horan was formerly the CEO of About.com, which was acquired by the New York Times for $410 million in 2005. Most recently, Horan was the CEO of IAC Media & Advertising. → Read More

October 19th, 2010

Scribd Partners With Apture To Include Rich Media Contextual Browsing Within Content

We wrote about Apture Highlights, a new plug-in that brings instantaneous search to content on the web, a few months ago. Today, Apture has scored a pretty significant deal with document-sharing site Scribd to allow users to use Apture Highlights on the tens of millions of public documents on the content platform.

As we wrote in August, ‘Apture Highlights’ plugs the “search leak” that is taking place with content on the web. The feature allows you to highlight any word or phrase on a page and instantly bring up search results in a window. The startup brings results from 60-plus sources including YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and more for extra context around content. → Read More

August 24th, 2010

Apture Highlights Brings Instantaneous Search To Any Web Page

Apture, the startup that lets online publishers enhance content with rich media pop-ups from a variety of sources based on the context of linked words and terms, is launching a nifty new plug-in today that brings instantaneous search to content on the web.

Called ‘Apture Highlights,’ the browser extension aims to plug the “search leak” that the company says is taking place with content on the web. Apture highlights a search leak as when a users is reading content, wants more information about a keyword or phrase and then opens another browser tab to search for the information on Google, Bing or Yahoo. The downside for the content publisher is that the user disengages with the actual content by leaving the page. → Read More

March 17th, 2009

Apture Raises $4.1 Million Round For Contextual Rich Media Overlays

Apture, the startup that lets online publishers enhance content with pop-ups that carry rich media from a variety of sources based on the context of linked words and terms, has scored a healthy $4.1 million in Series A financing from Clearstone Venture Partners and a number of angel investors including Paul Maritz (CEO of VMware) and Steve Taylor (former Executive VP of the Boston Globe). The service was first launched in June 2008 and has much improved since then.

Online publishers can use Apture by simply inserting a line of Javascript code after creating an account, which allows them to link words and phrases to a HTML-based overlay that acts like a minitiature browser that enables readers to find and explore related multimedia content without leaving the original page. → Read More

August 29th, 2008

Some CrunchBase API Stats and Apps

Six weeks ago we launched an API for our technology database, CrunchBase. The idea was to give away lots of clean, structured data about the companies we cover, data that could be used to build new services and improve upon existing ones.

Since then we’ve seen a number of impressive things built on top of the API. And the traffic has started to add up: between July 15th and August 15th we fulfilled nearly 800,000 API requests, compared to ~1.3m page views for the website itself.

We now have over 15 projects hooked up to CrunchBase with many others on the way. Developers interested in using CrunchBase data for their own projects should check out the API documentation.

Today we wanted to highlight a few of the more sophisticated product integrations to date. → Read More

June 30th, 2008

Apture Gives Contextual Popups A Good Name

I’m generally not pleased when a user interface does something I didn’t intend it to do. Such as when I click on a link but instead of taking me to a new page, it pops up an overlay with advertising or related content (see this Yahoo News article or any website “enhanced” with Vibrant Media to see what I mean). So I really should resist the idea behind Apture, a startup founded by three Stanford computer science students that aims to improve contextual popups rather than ban them. But its technology and user interface is actually quite good, even if it does require users to change their expectations a bit. → Read More

Real-Time
Crunchbase

Durham Graphene Science — Received £1.2M in Seed funding from IP Group Plc
2.13.2012
Durham Graphene Science — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
2.13.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
2.1.2012
2.9.2012
LetsBuy.com — Acquired by Flipkart.
2.9.2012
Cocoafish — Acquired by Appcelerator.
2.9.2012
Durham Graphene Science — Received £1.2M in Seed funding from IP Group Plc
2.13.2012
ClevrU — Received $550k in Unattributed funding
2.10.2012
OpenLabel — Received $80k in Seed funding from Peter Kirwan, Tim Drees, and Doug Taylor
2.10.2012
sneakpeeq — Received $2.67M in Unattributed funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, Keith Rabois, Tim Kendall, Mike Murphy, and Vikas Gupta
2.10.2012
Noble Biomaterials — Received $8M in Series B funding from Northwater Capital, TL Ventures, and DuPont Capital Management
2.10.2012
2.13.2012
Peter Kirwan — Invested in OpenLabel.
2.10.2012
Doug Taylor — Invested in OpenLabel.
2.10.2012
Tim Drees — Invested in OpenLabel.
2.10.2012
Metamorphic Ventures — Invested in sneakpeeq.
2.10.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Durham Graphene Science — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
ClevrU — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
OpenLabel — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Bookt — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Kigo.Net — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
2.12.2012
Metier HR - Cloud Based HR Process Automation Suite — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
TweepsMap — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Wupbox account — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
Pocketbook (Mobile app, coming soon) — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
CrunchBase