Android

Can a trip planner work overtime as a travel journal and protect confidential documents too? Maybe. Name: Tripini Available for: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android What it does: This app keeps all of your pertinent travel information - medical, passport, visa, flight, hotel, car rental information, photos, and more - locked in a password-protected area on your Apple or Android device. Cost: Free, for an introductory period. What's hot: The password system worked for me, and I would feel safe leaving my information on the app. I hesitated only when I came to filling out my debit and credit card info.

Check out these smartphone applications for shopping in the holiday season. All are free and have versions for Android and Apple devices. ShopAdvisor , by Evoqu Inc., will ask you to turn on your phone's GPS or enter your zip code and then search for any product. The results you see will indicate online and brick-and-mortar sources, prices, and, in the case of local stores, a map to the nearby locations. For online sources, you may add the product to a virtual shopping cart, or place a call if the selling website has a telephone option.

Check out these smartphone applications for shopping in the holiday season. All are free and have versions for Android and Apple devices. ShopAdvisor , by Evoqu Inc., will ask you to turn on your phone's GPS or enter your zip code and then search for any product. The results you see will indicate online and brick-and-mortar sources, prices, and, in the case of local stores, a map to the nearby locations. For online sources, you may add the product to a virtual shopping cart, or place a call if the selling website has a telephone option.

IN THE REGION VWR buys U.K. lab supplier VWR International L.L.C. , of Radnor, acquired Lab3 Ltd. , a scientific laboratory supplies distributor in Bristol, United Kingdom. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. It's the third acquisition for VWR in 2012, with previous purchases of a lab-supplies distributor in the Czech Republic and a German distributor of clean-room products. The privately held VWR had 2011 net sales of $4.1 billion. - Mike Armstrong   Layoffs by Acme parent Acme Markets owner Supervalu Inc. said it would lay off 700 people at its Shaw's and Star Market supermarkets across New England by Nov. 3 in a cost-cutting move coinciding with ongoing efforts to find a buyer for the debt-addled corporation.

Smartphone applications can ease the business of trading contact information with new acquaintances and facilitate on-the-fly video conferences, thus enhancing your social-networking capabilities. Bump , from Bump Technologies Inc., is a free app for iPhone and Android that passes contact information or photos from one smart device to another by, yes, bumping them together. The move does not depend on both parties having the same type of phone, and it looks magical. What happens is that both devices communicate with Bump Technologies' cloud servers, which detect the smartphones' locations and their simultaneous "bump" to make an educated guess that the devices are trying to contact each other.

Smartphone applications can ease the business of trading contact information with new acquaintances and facilitate on-the-fly video conferences, thus enhancing your social-networking capabilities. Bump , from Bump Technologies Inc., is a free app for iPhone and Android that passes contact information or photos from one smart device to another by, yes, bumping them together. The move does not depend on both parties having the same type of phone, and it looks magical. What happens is that both devices communicate with Bump Technologies' cloud servers, which detect the smartphones' locations and their simultaneous "bump" to make an educated guess that the devices are trying to contact each other.

ALTHOUGH they both aim to give Philadelphians a quick, mobile way to send reports of neighborhood problems to the city department that can best address them, the Nutter administration's Philly 311 mobile app and City Councilman Bobby Henon's CityHall App aren't the same animal. Like the blue-collar, plain-speaking councilman himself, Henon's CityHall App is the one you'd most like to have a beer with. It's a simple, user-friendly way to take a photo, write a comment, send it off and get a quick response.

WASHINGTON - Cellphones using Google's Android operating system are at risk of being disabled or wiped clean of their data, including contacts, music and photos, because of a security flaw discovered several months ago but unnoticed until now. Opening a link to a website or a mobile application embedded with malicious code can trigger an attack capable of destroying the memory card in Android-equipped handsets made by Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Sony...

Here's a look at smartphone applications to foliate a family tree, digitize and post old family snapshots, and probe for family connections among obituaries published around the world. Ancestry , by Ancestry.com, for Android and Apple, is free - at the start. When you load Ancestry, it asks you to sign up. You'll have to decide if the family tree you'll build is public or private. Going public makes it a bit easier for possible distant relatives to find you and get in touch. To start building your tree, tap on the icons marked with your name, "Add Father," and "Add Mother" to fill in details and add photos.

The new Kindle Fire HD may not stir you to pass along your old iPad as a hand-me-down. But if you own an earlier small tablet running on Android or another operating system, or even last year's original Kindle Fire, you'll want to take a close look. The Fire HD isn't for everyone. Like its predecessor, it still draws potshots for seeming, as one critic put it, "like a shop window onto the world's biggest content department store. " Yet Amazon has refined an already impressive $199 device, while foreshadowing what it promises before Thanksgiving: an 8.9-inch Fire HD, including a 4G wireless version, that will compete more directly with Apple's 9.7-inch iPad.