Apture is one of the coolest plugins I’ve stumbled across in a long while.

It allows you to instantly add rich, dimensional media to your blog or website by integrating text, images, video, maps, music and much more from over 50 sources; including Wikipedia, Flickr, NY Times, YouTube, Twitter and many others.

In the data rich environment of the Web that we now all live in, for many of us the big challenge is finding a way to present all the great new content we have at our fingertips on a web site.

So as a web site owner or blogger, Apture allows you to begin to curate that content and begin to provide the proper context for your visitors.

Take, for example, this widget (click image to activate) I created for the neighborhood in which I live; containing a map, photos, video driving directions, historical background and a great article from the NY Times on Portland’s restaurants.

You can also create a link that has the same functionality built in.

Using a third party source like Outside.in for content is certainly a sensible and easy way to add some depth to your web site (see Looking for Hyperlocal Content?) but using a plugin like Apture, you can really add the right personal flourish (like linking your Twitter profile) and, more importantly, begin to apply the proper editorial oversight to really present your city, town or neighborhood in the right context.

Read More: Sellsius’ Joseph Ferrara writing on Inman News also profiled Apture.

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Outside.in has you covered.

They have just launched a new product called Outside.in for Publishers – what they’re calling “an out-of-the-box hyperlocal news section for your website”.

Features include:

• Customized Neighborhood News Pages for every neighborhood in your market.
• Rich, interactive maps, headlines, and excerpts.
• Access to aggregated stories from all local blogs, news sites, and other sources—including Twitter!
• Tools to curate the stories, sources, and tags that will appear on your site.

The product is free but does come embedded ads from Outside.in. There is an ad-free version that can be licensed however.

I think this would be a great product to integrate with any online real estate research tool. A way to quickly mashup listings, neighborhoods with a real-time view of the events happening around you.

Combine this with the ratings from Walkscore, a proximity search filter like Estately’s, market data widgets from Altos Research and, of course, listings drawn hopefully from the MLS and you start to have a very compelling tool for consumers to dive in to.

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