For one Stanford grad, an undergraduate dream has materialized into reality — cyber reality, at least. Tristan Harris ‘06 watched over three years of hard work pay off last month when he and a team of fellow alumni launched the online media enhancement company Apture.

The company, which began initially as a brainstorming project between Harris, a friend and a few Knight fellows, aims to provide publishers with a user-friendly program to integrate diverse media. Apture links run-of-the-mill news stories to video clips, pictures, articles or even PowerPoint and PDF documents.

“The goal of Apture,” Harris said, “is to try and turn flat Web pages into rich multimedia experiences.”

Harris emphasized the originality of the program’s accessibility.

“Up until now if you wanted to add a video or image to your page, you had to have some knowledge of how the Web works,” he said. “It’s never been possible for lay people who are not technically savvy to link PDF documents together with an image, with a PowerPoint, with an MP3, together with a video and have all that information presented in context.”

“We really wanted to make it dead simple for anybody to take multimedia from around the Web and link it into their page,” Harris added.

The company, which launched in April 2008, has already contracted with big name publisher The Washington Post. According to Harris, several others, including The Daily, have agreed to move forward. The Daily implemented Apture on its Web site this week. The program is also available to individuals — including bloggers and those with personal Web sites — free of charge.

“Apture adds a new dimension — a web of information — inside washingtonpost.com stories and continues our mission of bringing readers the most comprehensive and in-depth news coverage,” said Washington Post Executive Editor Jim Brady in a press release.

Beyond helping publishers diversify their media, Harris mentioned the philosophical motivation behind Apture.

“We’re trying to generate empathy and interest in things that people wouldn’t be expected to be engaged in,” he said.

Harris noted that readers are often apathetic about issues if they do not know the context or background. He mentioned as an example that readers may be more interested in reading about Burma if they knew where it was located on a map.

“If they don’t know that one piece of information — it’s up to them to look it up,” he said.

While researching something new may be second nature to a Stanford student, said Harris, it may be cumbersome or even embarrassing for some to look up a fact they feel they should already know.

“With Apture, someone can link the name of that person to the Wikipedia article to an interview on BBC and have the video playing alongside the background of who that person is,” he said. The idea is, “Make this person real to me. [Then] they can care about it.”