Once in a while you come across a seemingly simple techie invention that makes your life online easier and richer.

Apture Highlights is a browser extension that allows you to get instant access to e.g. Wikipedia, Google, YouTube or Twitter without leaving the page.

Here’s how it works:

You are on a web page. You select a piece of text and the little ‘learn more’ balloon appears. You click on it and the small pop-up screen appears. In the pop-up you instantly get:

  • Google search results
  • Bing search results
  • Google & Flickr Images
  • Wikipedia page
  • YouTube videos
  • Twitter streams
  • Google maps
  • And more…

Very handy! For instance when you highlight a city name, the pop-up shows the city on Google maps. Or highlight a person’s name and instantly get that persons’ Twitter stream or Wikipedia page. All in all a really handy little tool for anyone who’s frequently using the web to search and research.

I love it!

If you’re using Chrome, click here to download the extension in 3 seconds flat. For Firefox or Safari: go here.

Below a little video with some quick user tips!