Apture

That's not a typo.

I'm one of those types that, when finding an interesting bit of text in a news article, or blog entry, I'll highlight the text, copy, and paste it directly into Google. Firefox makes that easy, with a Google text search box in the upper-tight corner of the browser. Highlight, copy, paste. I probably do that at least a hundred times a day.

What if there were an easier way to do that, if that weren't easy enough.

Enter Apture.

From their website: "We give readers the power to search and explore rich content and media from the web without even leaving the page."

I've got it running here on my blog. Try it - highlight any word or phrase; immediately a box pops up like that shown at right. The context menu that pops up with more search suggestions is rich and full of more information on whatever text you have selected.

It's easy to incorporate it into your own website, and they even have a plugin so you can use it wherever you are, on ANY website.

Couldn't be more simple than that.

Apture. It's a good thing.