08.22
I think Apture is a great idea for several reasons. The first is that it makes generating a post dead simple and thankfully you are not locked into using only Apture recommendations. The ability to embed videos, upload files, and link to just about any content gives you the freedom to customize the content to better suit your audience.
The other advantage of using a tool like Apture is that it allows you to bundle media. All content is pulled around one center which always stays above the fold and the variety of content you have to chose from is impressive. While I would like to see more content along the lines of Vimeo, Flickr slideshows, etc the embed option makes this not such a critical issue.
Media bundling, if done well, could make generating traditional blog posts a thing of the past especially if Apture enables the option to pull from you own media library. What I think Apture should do is allow us to generate text boxes on the fly so that we can dynamically link content with text.
I chose TCHO because it is a very hip boutique chocolate company located near where I used to work in San Francisco. I figured they’d have a wide variety of media available and thankfully they did. Apture not only shows you what is available, it also shows you what is not available, so you need to pick your subjects wisely.
My final comment is that Apture needs to put some serious effort into overhauling their look. They need to look a lot less YouTube and much more Vimeo. A little more sex appeal would suit them well.
Related posts:
Hey Fogcity,
Thanks for installing Apture. Have you checked out our blog? We actually detail a bunch of tips about creating apturized links from text.
blog.apture.com
Andrew-
Sorry for the delay. The power was out all night here in Rome.
I read through the blog site but did not see template customization options. Maybe I missed it?
I need to spend some more time working with the platform but first thoughts are that it would be great to modify colors, icons, etc. For example, rather than have a generic button why not simply show the logo itself?
Also, the ability to move the buttons around the border so that you could isolate them into text, video, audio galleries in various sides would be nice. A Flickr slideshow in the main image would also give an Apture post significant appeal.
Cheers,
Jon