I activated the Apture plug-in today and it’s pretty cool.  Apture lets you create a collection of links, each of which is popped up in its own window.  The idea is to keep your readers on your site while reading or watching content from other sites.

The first link you select serves as the frame, and all the subsequent links appear as icons underneath the control bar.  Here is a sample Apture link I created: Open Access.   I chose a youTube video as the frame, and included a wiki article from the Commons Wiki, an image from Flickr, an article from Wikipedia, Open Access on Twitter, Peter Suber’s Linked-In account,  and an e-book  from Google Books.  When you select web pages, you can open up snippets, or the whole page in another window.

Apture may be activated by going to “Plugins” on the WordPress dashboard.  Scroll down until you find it, and click on the “Activate” hyperlink.  Once it is installed, you will be guided to set up an Apture account.  A quick “Getting Started” tutorial is available.

See Apture for documentation and additional information.   Unfortunately, Apture does not work on the iPad.  Apture requires Flash Player, and Apple doesn’t allow it.

This can also be done using Apture’s “embed” function.  The following sample was just embedded in the post: