November 10th, 2011

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

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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… → 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 → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → Read More