Santa Monica-based Clearstone Venture Partners is the lead investor in a Northern California firm focused on the blogging and publishing industry, Apture. Apture said this morning that Clearstone was the lead investor in a $4.1M, Series A investment in the firm, which develops tools which allows publishers to add multimedia to their articles and web pages. David Stern and Sumant Mandal of Clearstone have joined Apture's board along with the funding. Apture develops tools which allow publishers to highlight and link terms in articles to multimedia popups, showing additional information, videos, photos, and other content. More information »