i actually think the whole concept is dumb. just spent 45 minutes doing it to prove a point. too bad websnappr is throttling requests for the preview images.

In case anyone wants a simple way to take screenshots of webpages (on Ubuntu):

    aptitude install xvfb xwd firefox netpbm

    Xvfb :4 -screen 0 1024x1024x24 &
    sleep 1
    firefox --display=:4.0 -width 1024 -height 1024 &
    sleep 10
    firefox -remote "openURL(http://news.ycombinator.com/)"
    sleep 5
    xwd -root -silent -display :4.0 | xwdtopnm | pnmcut 1 125 800 600 | pnmtojpeg > screenshot.jpg

Of course these commands can be automated in your language of choice. The only problems: firefox opens a new tab by default, so you can't close old ones; and there's no way to find out when a page is done loading.

Oh come on, you know that is an iPhone app waiting to happen. Coverflow search of the web on your iPhone! That's something people will want.