The mobile site opens to a simple search box where you can enter a product name or the number that appears under the UPC bar code found  on most products.  Snappr returns a list of products with price, a picture and user rating if available. The site is available in English and German and can be used anywhere in the world.

Does this sound familiar?  Snappr is a near clone of Barcle which I reviewed in Feburary.  To Snappr's credit, it's a more attractive site than Barcle and seems to work better too.  Searching is much faster and the bar code database seems more complete.  In a quick test with three products, a prepaid mobile phone, a book, and an analog to digital TV converter box, Snappr found the phone and the book, while Barcle found none of the items.  Plus, Snappr shows prices in the search results list, while Barcle requires you to drill down into each item's detail page to find the cost.

It's not all rosy with Snappr though. Products are returned in random order rather than sorted in some logical fashion like by price from lowest to highest. The prices shown are often wildly different than the actual price on the retailer's site. Like that SIM card for $1.19 shown in the screenshot.  The actual price on Amazon is 29.99! There doesn't seem to be a pattern, sometimes Snappr's price is higher than the real price, sometimes lower.

Like almost every mobile shopping site, actually making a purchase can be difficult. There is a "Buy.." link for each item which goes to the retailer offering the product.  But the link often goes to a full web page that is impossible to use on a mobile. Fortunately many of Snappr's items are sourced on Amazon.com which does deliver a mobile page whenever it detects a mobile browser. Registered Amazon users with a credit card on file can even make "1-click" purchases on the Amazon mobile site.

Snappr also has an iPhone app that can use the phone's camera to capture product bar codes so you don't have to key in those long strings of digits. That's a great idea which I hope they extend to other platforms. I don't have an iPhone to try it out with but according to a post on the Agregated Intelligence Blog, it works but is harder to use than Android's ShopSavvy due to limitations of the iPhone's SDK. Source: Mobility.mobi

Filed in: Wap Review Directory - Shopping

Ratings: Content:  Usability: 

Mobile Link: snappr.mobi

MW: What [MySpace] understand[s] is their $25 billion to $30 billion valuation.-

JF: But that's [expletive]. We both know that's [expletive].

MW: It doesn't make any difference. That's gonna go down. What they are looking at is the distinct possibility that it can go down to nothing.

JF: How do you find that plausible? It's not even a utility like--the anti-Google argument is this: If someone builds a better search engine tomorrow, I have zero switching costs. If I am on MySpace, I have 500 friends. I use it to communicate with people. You can't just move. It's a pain in the ass. All your stuff is there.

MW: But that's exactly what they said about AOL.

JF: You did not develop that relationship with AOL.

MW: You did. You exactly did.

JF: How?

MW: Your email was there, because your friends were there. I mean, AOL operated actually as the community of its day. There were all of those-

JF: But besides the email and, OK, the-

MW: There were the infinite number of chat rooms. Layer upon layer upon layer of sex chat rooms.

JF: Of course. And I give you credit for having pointed to that as the secret driver of its success. But, all you need is a different chat room. You don't have pictures up [on AOL]. You don't have your history up there. You don't have-

MW: It doesn't matter. What they saw at the time was that [users] were absolutely wedded to AOL. That was Time Warner's bet on that.

JF: AOL was monodimensional in a way that MySpace is not. I don't think that's particularly debatable.

MW: I don't think that's true. I think it is--if you're on MySpace now, you're a [expletive] cretin. And you're not only a [expletive] cretin, but you're poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.

JF: [unsuccessfully stifling laughter] I don't mean to get all Murdoch's-kids on you [an obscure reference to an earlier part of the conversation], but if you are in a band, you are on MySpace. You have to be on MySpace. That's a powerful driver. And second of all-- if I am to accept your reasoning, even though I don't--as the success of [News Corp's British tabloid] The Sun will tell you, there are lot of cretins out there and you can make a lot of money off cretins. By appealing to their essential--

MW: No! That is the difference. And that is one of the interesting points of Murdoch. He wants to make money off of what he rightly saw as a rising lower class. He came to this country and he sees, that's just not really true. No one really identifies with being lower class [in the US]. As soon as it comes to you- I am lower class'--you run, and you have to rehabilitate all of your aspirational identifiers.

See Also: MySpace CEO Dewolfe: Recession Hammering Growth Prospects

In spite of the general economic downturn, ‘Black Friday’ sales of Apple computers were “better than expected,” analysts told investors Monday.

Like past Black Friday sales, Apple offered discounts on seven products with an 8 percent discount.

However, Mac sales we more than six times what they were in November, according to Piper Jaffray. Analyst Gene Munster said an average of 13 Macs per hour were sold Friday compared to two computers per hour in November. Munster based his numbers on 10 hours of monitoring five Apple retail stores.

Friday, Apple cut its “unibody” MacBooks by $101 and $51 discounts on the $999 white plastic entry-level MacBook. One-day price reductions of $51 on the entry-level 2.4GHz iMac and $101 for the 2.66GHz and 2.8GHz aluminum all-in-ones were also unveiled.

iPhones did not share in the same level of consumer enthusiasm. Munster said iPhone sales averaged 3.4 per hour compared to 1.3 per hour in November.

Although the analyst expects the iPhone will receive a boost in holiday sales, the impact will be “minimal.”

In a wider review of Black Friday Apple sales, Deutsche Bank said “demand for Apple was solid considering the macro backdrop.” Both Mac and iPod sales for the day likely were “modestly above” Deutsche Bank’s estimates. The firm, which reviewed retail and online sales at more than 125 storefronts, expects Apple to report 5 million iPhone sales for the quarter.

Deutsche found the new MacBooks were popular Black Friday offerings with 2GHz and 2.4GHz MacBooks outselling the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

Best Buy locations reported strong demand for the iPhone and shoppers at AT&T stores preferred the lower-priced 8GB iPhone. The reverse was true for iPod shoppers: the 16GB nanos were outselling the 8GB nanos, according to Deutesche.

Reuters:

The media company, which owns cable news network CNN and movie studio Warner Bros among its media properties, is proposing the split after it separates from its Time Warner Cable Inc unit early in 2009.

A special meeting of stockholders will be held on Jan. 16 at its New York headquarters. It said in a proxy filing that stockholders will be asked to vote on a reverse stock split in a ratio of either 1-for-2 or 1-for-3, as determined by the board.

Time Warner owns 84 percent of Time Warner Cable and its shareholders will receive a special one-time dividend of $10.9 billion when it separates from the cable unit.

The media company said its board believes that following the separation, the market price and trading ranges for Time Warner stock may be significantly lower than the current market price due to the fact that Time Warner will have distributed all of its Time Warner Cable shares to Time Warner shareholders.

The board said it believes that increasing Time Warner's absolute share price will make it a more liquid and marketable stock. It said some institutional investors and investment funds are prohibited from investing in lower-priced stocks.

Another benefit: The new stock price will be less embarrassing.

1. Scenario: Selecting/de-selecting the text object and trying to move it on the canvas using keyboard arrow keys.
   Problem description: The text within a textbox in Fireworks CS4 on a Mac will move within the textbox and even move out of the textbox if you select and deselect the textbox multiple times while moving the textbox with the keyboard arrow keys each time.
   Temporary workaround: When ever you see a text image going out of sync with its bounding box, just re-adjust the text or double click inside the bounding box. This will make the text object to correct itself.
The above scenario can be seen visually from the video. The video has been provided by www.designme.sk
View Video
2. Scenario: Trying to align text elements using mouse either against other objects present on the canvas or a guide, using the cues from smart guides.
   
   Problem description: When ever we have grids enabled and we try to align a text element against other objects on the canvas using the cue from smart guides, sometimes the text bounding box shifts away from the text image on releasing the mouse.
   
   It seems this shift in the bounding box is happening when the bounding box tends to snap to the nearest grid pixel and we release the mouse at half pixel less.
   
   Temporary workaround: Try to align text elements with the following settings turned off. (i)View->Grid->Snap to Grid and (ii)View->Smart Guides->Snap to Smart Guides


3. Scenario: Range Kerning/Kerning value in CS3 is not the same in CS4.
   
   Problem description: Range Kerning value applied in CS3 does not give the same appearance when opened in CS4 and updated. The look of the text block totally changes and we need to manually enter the new value to get back the desired effect.
   
   Temporary workaround: Range Kerning control present in the UI has now been changed to Tracking in FWCS4. Tracking control works the same way as that present in apps such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. To apply tracking, a range of characters has to be selected first, unlike kerning control wherein, just keeping the cursor between 2 characters we could apply kerning.
   
   For a value of Kerning applied in CS3, if we set approximately 10 times the value of Tracking in CS4, we can get similar looking text element. Ex: if the Kerning value which was set in CS3 for a text element was 10, then around 100 could be the Tracking value which we will have to set in CS4 so that we can get similar looking result.
4. Scenario: 2 pixel shift in text glyphs when we change area/frame text to point text and vice a versa.
   
   Problem description: When we change the area text (drawn by click dragging on the canvas using the text tool such that we get an area bounding box) into a point text (drawn by just click once on the canvas using text tool) by double clicking the top right handle or vice-versa, we can see that there is a 2-px shift in glyphs on the canvas.
   
   In ATE, bounding box of a point text is different than the area text. The area text has a small gap between the glyphs and the bounding box, thus currently when we do such a change; there is a slight shift of the glyphs either upwards or downwards depending upon the point or area text change done.
   
   Temporary workaround: Create either an area text or point text depending upon your requirement and don’t shift or change from one type to the other. Note that when you convert area text to point text, the glyphs shift 2 px downwards and when we convert a point text into an area text, glyphs shift 2 px upwards.
   
   


5. Scenario: Trying to 9-slice scale a custom symbol or common library element, sometimes the text jumps away.
   
   Problem description: When we try to apply 9slice scaling on common library element such as a button etc, sometimes the text jumps away from its location. 9-slice scaling when applied to a text bounding box changes it to an area text if it’s a point text which makes the glyphs to shift 2 px from their original location. Moreover in situations where in 9-slice scaling is used to scale the button element, after some point the text tends to break away from its original location.
   
   Temporary workaround: If a symbol or custom component has text contained inside, then make sure that the text object is placed well inside the 9-slice guides and they are not overlapping. More importantly, make sure that the text element is an area text box (if it’s not then convert it by dragging the lower right corner of the bounding box) and not a point text box.

The current specification for password-based 256-bit AES encryption in PDF provides greater performance than the previous 128-bit AES implementation.  While this allows for 256-bit AES password protected documents to open faster in Acrobat 9, it can also allow external brute-force cracking tools to attempt to guess document passwords more rapidly because fewer processor cycles are required to test each password guess.  These tools operate independently of Acrobat and work directly on a password protected document by repeatedly guessing from lists of dictionary words like "turkey", "potato", and "pie" to see if the document will open.

Adobe continues to recommend that customers using password-based encryption utilize long pass-phrases with upper case, lower case, numbers, and symbols to help mitigate dictionary attacks. With a longer phrase and more diversity of characters, there are many more permutations to guess. This significantly increases the time required to guess passwords, which in turn significantly increases the security of the protected document.

Additional security measures were added to the 256-bit AES implementation of password security in PDF, and Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader 9 both support these measures.  Specifically, Acrobat 8 used pass-phrases of up to 32 Roman characters in length for 128-bit AES encryption.  Acrobat 9 now supports pass-phrases of 127 Roman characters in length for 256-bit AES encryption and added support for unicode characters.  In the permutation with repetitions formula used to calculate how many unique pass-phrases are possible, X^Y, Adobe has increased both X and Y in Acrobat 9. Pass-phrases can now be up to 4 times as long and support a greater number of international characters and symbols to be entered by keyboards around the world, which can greatly increase document protection when used properly.

Need help picking a long pass-phrase? Pick a line or two from your favorite song or poem and add numbers or symbols if they aren't already there.

Adobe continues to make significant investments in document security.  Acrobat utilizes NIST FIPS 140 certified encryption libraries and is certified by the US Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC).  Adobe offers several document encryption methods at multiple levels of assurance and is considering additional security measures for future releases of password security that balance performance with security.

For higher-assurance applications, Adobe continues to recommend using PKI-based encryption or Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management encryption - instead of user-generated document open passwords.  Acrobat and Adobe Reader 9 now support 256-bit AES encryption for both of these environments.  256-bit AES encryption is widely known to be stronger than 128-bit AES.  Document protection can also be increased with hardware tokens - including three-factor authentication with a smartcard, PIN and biometric.

For more information about Adobe's information assurance solutions in Acrobat, LiveCycle, and other applications, visit http://adobe.com/security

keywords: acrobat 9 password secure elcomsoft advanced pdf password recovery

1. Scenario: Selecting/de-selecting the text object and trying to move it on the canvas using keyboard arrow keys.
   Problem description: The text within a textbox in Fireworks CS4 on a Mac will move within the textbox and even move out of the textbox if you select and deselect the textbox multiple times while moving the textbox with the keyboard arrow keys each time.
   Temporary workaround: When ever you see a text image going out of sync with its bounding box, just re-adjust the text or double click inside the bounding box. This will make the text object to correct itself.
The above scenario can be seen visually from the video. The video has been provided by www.designme.sk
View Video
2. Scenario: Trying to align text elements using mouse either against other objects present on the canvas or a guide, using the cues from smart guides.
   
   Problem description: When ever we have grids enabled and we try to align a text element against other objects on the canvas using the cue from smart guides, sometimes the text bounding box shifts away from the text image on releasing the mouse.
   
   It seems this shift in the bounding box is happening when the bounding box tends to snap to the nearest grid pixel and we release the mouse at half pixel less.
   
   Temporary workaround: Try to align text elements with the following settings turned off. (i)View->Grid->Snap to Grid and (ii)View->Smart Guides->Snap to Smart Guides


3. Scenario: Range Kerning/Kerning value in CS3 is not the same in CS4.
   
   Problem description: Range Kerning value applied in CS3 does not give the same appearance when opened in CS4 and updated. The look of the text block totally changes and we need to manually enter the new value to get back the desired effect.
   
   Temporary workaround: Range Kerning control present in the UI has now been changed to Tracking in FWCS4. Tracking control works the same way as that present in apps such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. To apply tracking, a range of characters has to be selected first, unlike kerning control wherein, just keeping the cursor between 2 characters we could apply kerning.
   
   For a value of Kerning applied in CS3, if we set approximately 10 times the value of Tracking in CS4, we can get similar looking text element. Ex: if the Kerning value which was set in CS3 for a text element was 10, then around 100 could be the Tracking value which we will have to set in CS4 so that we can get similar looking result.
4. Scenario: 2 pixel shift in text glyphs when we change area/frame text to point text and vice a versa.
   
   Problem description: When we change the area text (drawn by click dragging on the canvas using the text tool such that we get an area bounding box) into a point text (drawn by just click once on the canvas using text tool) by double clicking the top right handle or vice-versa, we can see that there is a 2-px shift in glyphs on the canvas.
   
   In ATE, bounding box of a point text is different than the area text. The area text has a small gap between the glyphs and the bounding box, thus currently when we do such a change; there is a slight shift of the glyphs either upwards or downwards depending upon the point or area text change done.
   
   Temporary workaround: Create either an area text or point text depending upon your requirement and don’t shift or change from one type to the other. Note that when you convert area text to point text, the glyphs shift 2 px downwards and when we convert a point text into an area text, glyphs shift 2 px upwards.
   
   


5. Scenario: Trying to 9-slice scale a custom symbol or common library element, sometimes the text jumps away.
   
   Problem description: When we try to apply 9slice scaling on common library element such as a button etc, sometimes the text jumps away from its location. 9-slice scaling when applied to a text bounding box changes it to an area text if it’s a point text which makes the glyphs to shift 2 px from their original location. Moreover in situations where in 9-slice scaling is used to scale the button element, after some point the text tends to break away from its original location.
   
   Temporary workaround: If a symbol or custom component has text contained inside, then make sure that the text object is placed well inside the 9-slice guides and they are not overlapping. More importantly, make sure that the text element is an area text box (if it’s not then convert it by dragging the lower right corner of the bounding box) and not a point text box.