You may have noticed tiny icons that appear before many of the links in my postings. They look like the icons pictured at right — although not exactly like these.

An application called Apture is responsible for these icons. When readers mouseover the icons, a little window pops up with a snippet of the Web site, document, Twitter feed, or whatever. Thus, readers can check out the links without having to leave my blog entries.

I’ve actually had Apture for awhile, and these icons have appeared from time to time. Now, however, Apture has made it easier to insert the icons, so I’m experimenting with integrating more of them. I have a bit of concern that Apture is slowing down the load time of A Storied Career, so do let me know if you notice problems.