As it affects this module, the recent announcement today that Apture has been acquired by Google and will discontinue its services on Dec 20th means this module will be drastically affected.

It appears this module will be rendered obsolete in all branches due to this change.

As it stands perhaps supporting the module is a fruitless effort for just a single month of use as no site will be able to use the functionality any longer after Dec 20th.

I propose opening up discussions on replacing the Apture services with something open source, functioning indefinitely, and simple. Thoughts?

Comments

lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented

I'm not sure there's even any open source 'tag extraction' code... Though there's plenty of free ones like OpenCalais, Alchemy, etc.... This is pretty worrying to me because although Apture was sort of an extension for me, some service to tag my content is more of a necessity.

The only similar project I can think of is Zemanta http://developer.zemanta.com/ (also has a drupal module) but it's not open source so perhaps it'll also clear off and take its secrets with it when it becomes sufficiently successful ;-)

There's also veeeb (also not open source) who seem to have been trying to get a project on here for a year. http://drupal.org/node/966360

Neither of these have that neat thing where you can highlight a word and get further information, though (but I suppose they're more than capable of doing so).

Personally I'm on the point of giving up on these services, I had 2 or 3 services I was putting into a project that have now gone before I even had the chance to finish it... but obviously it's not the end of the world and these are more extensions than fundamental necessities so perhaps we should use them while they exist.

lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented

Agree though it would be nice to have a module that draws on services like OpenCalais, but does everything else within the module. Then at least we can hop from one tag extractor to another when things get choppy.

vallab444’s picture

vallab444 commented

sad to see Apture getting extinguished by Google - that's evil. Struggling hard to find a substitute, but none so far. Apture was certainly unlike any other. It appears one needs to be very careful about giving too much importance to third-party services such as APture's - paid-for or free - in the scheme of things. There is no guarantee that they will stay on - whether successful (eaten up) or not (fold up).

lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented

Just come across this which looks like it might be the most similar to Apture

http://drupal.org/project/Headup

vallab444’s picture

vallab444 commented

thanks, lightsurge. yes, I'd explored this some time back, but kept Apture as it looked superior. Let me go back to Headup once again! btw, Zemanta has balloons - which I sense, is close.

lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented

Filed an issue in the Tagging issue queue... since it's done so much legwork in terms of extracting tags on the fly during content creation (edit: actually no, it requires re-editing the node for tag 'suggestions' to appear), as well as on view, seems like it's already part-way to being able to enrich content in a similar way to Apture.

#1340760: Content enrichment / Complementary content

RKS’s picture

RKS commented

I hate it when things I like go away. I still won't upgrade Firefox because they discontinued Ubiquity. That is the most awesome thing to have ever existed.

As far as this service goes, I don't think you will ever get a stable service unless Google puts it out there. Google likes eating up lots of services like this when they think it takes away from their business or they think it can enrich their business. In this case, it appears they just thought Apture was taking away something since they're buying it to kill it.

I don't know if Drupal will ever have the capabilities of doing what you need without integrating with an outside source. That's what all these services do, they integrate with their own systems on their end. The module is useless without that part and so that's the essential ingredient. Drupal doesn't have that service so finding more information on a word will be limited in Drupal to the current installation.

lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented

I think integrating with an outside source is okay... even if extensions like Apture disappear, I think there'll always be a semantic tagging facility around (and as services like Libravatar show https://www.libravatar.org/, 'federated' facilities like these aren't outside the realm of open source to get involved in).

The strength of Apture for me was its UI which looked fantastic and that's probably going to be the hardest thing to replicate as a Drupal module. But I felt it was weak in terms of the 'highlight text for more information' concept, I'm sure I'm not the only one who had keywords like 'The' appearing popular ;-)

There's lots of stuff out there already to get traffic/keyword analysis... All I really want is something that flags up keywords in content which are rich in web content (which is already easy to do) and that UI for displaying this web content.

RKS’s picture

RKS commented

I actually don't know anything about this module. I never used it. I had looked at it, downloaded it, but never installed it on my site. I was planning to, when I found the time to explore it, but then I got that announcement and so I won't bother.

So I really don't know what this modules does well or what it doesn't do very well. Sorry.

patricksettle’s picture

patricksettle commented

@RKS It's in use on The Nation ( http://www.thenation.com ) if you select a word and hover over the "Learn More" popup to see it in action.

ebieymjunior’s picture

ebieymjunior commented

It looks like the Apture service is not out at all, however I think the settings are quite different.

On their site they give a code and give these instructions:
-Copy the code above to your clipboard.
-Find the Site Footer in your site template and paste the installation code just above the tag. If you are on Blogger, add an HTML/Gadget and paste the code inside. Save the changes.
-Now you can highlight any text on the page to start looking up phrases with Apture. If you want the Apture Site Bar to appear when the page is scrolled, log in to your account to enable it.

Can't this module be changed to automatically include that in Drupal or is it impossible?

vako’s picture

vako commented

Not sure where you saw the message since their website is almost disabled.
My Apture links for images, videos and PDFs have already been disabled.

ebieymjunior’s picture

ebieymjunior commented

When you go to their site and click on a link at the bottom, there's a link at the top that says "Publisher login". You can then login with your info or register.

lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented

@ebieymjunior just because you can still sign up on their website doesn't mean the services that power the app are still running.

ebieymjunior’s picture

ebieymjunior commented

Yea,

I don't know if it works, just letting you know what was written.
Hope there's a good replacement for this as it would be very useful.

lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented

In terms of content enrichment, the only other module I could find was zemanta, I'm unconvinced at the level of interest in it though #1420542: Is this module alive?

In general (and for good reason probably) I think content enrichment app developers are more interested in the browser plugins.

I guess organisations like Google could have already come up with a powerful multi-media content enrichment app similar to Apture that could be integrated with platforms like Drupal... but that they haven't, and in fact buy away one that did, with a view to using the resource to enhance their browser, spelling out the fact that providing a content enrichment facility for CMSs is not something generally seen as a good move right now.

I do think it'll come back though, I don't think people generally like installing apps - people have gone all eSafety-shellfish.

socialnicheguru’s picture

socialnicheguru commented

there is also this module but it is only for Drupal 6 at this point
http://drupal.org/project/Headup

ebieymjunior’s picture

ebieymjunior commented

As lightsurge has mentioned above, veeeb looks interesting and but for some reason they haven't been able to get their project on drupal.org. Is there a way to get that working?

vako’s picture

vako commented

Headup looks interesting, however the module haven't been updated since 2010, have only 3 issues and only 5 sites are using it...;)

    Reported installs: 1 site currently report using this module. View usage statistics.
    Last modified: April 12, 2010
dreamleader’s picture

dreamleader commented

I checked out the project/headup. Unfortunately, it is only available for Drupal 6. Does anyone know of an alternative module to either Apture or Headup for Drupal 7?