Now You Can Use the Nook Touch ... As a Kindle
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An anonymous reader writes "Barnes & Nobles' latest e-reader has already been hacked. In a couple of surprise videos this morning, the hacker zoryl showed the Nook Touch running the Kindle app and running ADW Launcher. The second video also hints at the presence of Bluetooth."
So how long (Score:2)
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Yeah, because Kindle sales surely make Amazon rich. Not.
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People buying nooks, over their kindle because then they can use B&Ns service and the Kindle service as well.
You need to look at it another way. The people doing these hacks are doing it for the lolz and a cheap tablet. All tablets I know of (IOS, Android, but I am not sure about the Windows and Blackberry tablets) already have the Kindle and BNB apps available. Little to no loss there.
Second, the Kindles are a loss leader from what I keep hearing from people I am going to assume did more research than I have into the matter. Amazon loses money from Kindles, but in selling a Kindle they know you are going to b
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The people doing these hacks are doing it for the lolz and a cheap tablet.
Not necessarily, in this case; an e-ink tablet would be barely useful at best. The original Nook has a dedicated group of individuals that hack on it, mostly to improve the user experience, and I presume they've migrated to the new Nook.
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People buying nooks, over their kindle because then they can use B&Ns service and the Kindle service as well.
Amazon isn't making money by selling Kindles. Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis?
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B&N have not caused any problems for the thousands of people who are VERY publicly hacking Nook Colors with a full Android.
And we've been doing that since shortly after they were released. There are multiple versions of Android in fact, and even more different roms to choose from.
Amazon has not made any noise that I have heard about either- I think they hope to achieve extra e-book sales from those who have hacked B&N devices while B&N is hoping for 2 things:
Increased customer loyalty (and purch
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I doubt that B&N cares one way or the other about people hacking their hardware. Considering that Nooks aren't locked into their store specifically, I have to assume that they make at least some profit off the sale of Nooks, even if the profit is minimal.
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In their ideal world, every unit shifted would be to some hardcore reade
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Honestly I don't think it's all that arguable. B&N's Nook color, even without hacking it, is essentially a fairly decent Android tablet for $250. I haven't hacked mine yet, and I still have a decent selection of games, web, e-mail, and quite a few utility apps just from the B&N store. At some point I'll probably hack it to run stock Android, but so far I haven't had a good reason to do so. The main reason I wanted a tablet was e-books, which it obviously handles quite well. Beyond that I mostl
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The only three reasons why i would hack my nook color iare,
The web browser is painful to use (no bookmark imports, no ad block)
The email client works, but not very well.
and I would want some push notifications, so I can send links from my desktop to the device for future reading.
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The books are still DRM encumbered, that's the part that the publishers care about. It's not going to be a problem unless a huge portion of the Nook owning public are no longer able to use the DRM files without cracking them.
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They got a NookColor sale out of me because of their lenient policy. That's money in the bank without advertising.
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They'll be getting more sales out of me for their lenient policies beyond my initial Nook Color.
Still hoping they use their access to get a Honeycomb port rolling officially, not that will ever actually happen but I can hope dangit.
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+1 NC sale because it was hackable
+1 NookTouch sale tonight because of this.
It makes sense to be nice to the device hackers, as it generates sales/goodwill from the community.
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So how long before Barnes and Noble or Amazon flip their wig and start filing lawsuits and or releasing patches to fix such a thing. I give it about a week tops.
So far they haven't complained about the Nook Color being rooted and used as an Android Tablet. A few of the engineers in fact are quite supportive of it. A Nook Color with custom firmware is only slightly below a Galaxy Tab wifi version with respect to hardware for about $100-$150 less. I suspect B&N isn't making much profit on the readers, and probably not losing much revenue from a small percentage of their sales to users who intend to root them and never actually use them as an e-reader. In the
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A few of the engineers in fact are quite supportive of it.
Ah, good to hear. Now, if only they'd tell us how to turn on the bluetooth antenna! :)
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Even though it's been turned on in CM7, it's not a full-strength/range nor good enough to support audio for some devices. External GPS support is really good though.
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it's not a full-strength/range nor good enough to support audio
Right, there's effectively no antenna yet. The chipset in the Nook shares a common antenna between WiFi and Bluetooth, but to enable Bluetooth to connect to the antenna requires some chipset instructions that apparently aren't publicly available.
As the customer, the Nook developers could presumably request this information, but then again Bluetooth isn't a feature of the Nook.
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. A Nook Color with custom firmware is only slightly below a Galaxy Tab wifi version with respect to hardware for about $100-$150 less.
Uh, except for that one minor thing... a 7" multi-touch screen. I'd say between that and the other hardware difference, you've found the $100 difference.
I was referring to the 7" Galaxy Tab wifi only which retails for $349, compared to the Nook Color which can be had refurbed from Overstock for $199 right now. Same processor just clocked a little slower, and both are multitouch capacitive 1024x600 screens. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=61241 [tigerdirect.com]
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I think perhaps Barnes & Noble gets the idea, people want access to their hardware.
+1. B&N deserves customer loyalty far more than Amazon. For now at least; I could very well end up eating those words once some dipshit bigwig looks at how locked down Kindles are and decides to play follow the leader.
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Doubt it'll happen... but if it does, you can always wait for Kobo to come out with a colour touch screen. I would be very surprised if that doesn't happen with the next generation of the Kobo reader, since they already have a really nice touch screen greyscale version that handles PDF better than any other ebook reader on the market right now. (and better than some Android tablets, to boot).
Kobo has gone on the record saying they are officially, as a company, against DRM and other ways to criminalize their
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They can file lawsuits if they want, but I can't think of a grounds they could do that on.
As for patches, Barnes and Noble left the door wide open to custom firmware. Both the Nook Color and Nook Touch use the same OMAP CPU and are hardwired to boot external (USB, microSD) media before touching the internal flash, and there's no code signing or encrypted images needed. They could only kill this off with updated hardware.
Android (Score:1)
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It's just an android device though, isn't it? Yeah, it's got Barnes and Noble stuff on it, but still, it can't be that hard to hack.
It's a ford. Shouldn't be that hard to put a chevy engine and a crystler transmission in should it? After all it's just a car.
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With an engine from Fiat and wiring by Lucas...
All hail Lucas, Prince of Darkness.
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Actually, it's not too bad. Why? Because each device has custom drivers, that may or may not have source code available. For instance, if you want to build Cyanogenmod from source for your phone, you have to hook your phone up and let it pull some drivers off of it. And some devices are not supported at all because they can't manage all of the necessary drivers.
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A Ford with a Chevy motor is probably one of the most popular rat rod recipes out there.. And the Chrysler Torqueflight transmission is one of the automatic transmissions of choice.. There are kits available that make a Chevy powered Ford with a Mopar transmission very easy to build.
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A Ford with a Chevy motor is an easy modification now because someone did all the hard work of making up a kit of motor mounts and associated parts to make it work. The first person who did the swap is another story, his was surely not as easy. A popular mod for older Jags is to swap in a small block Chevy with a GM alternator and transmission. Yes its a kit.
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The only hard bit about it is hooking it all into the stock dash controls and exhaust manifold routing. Custom motor/transmission mounts are actually pretty easy to do.
And yes, old Jags are pretty cars, old Jags with bowties are pretty cars that don't spend half their time with your mechanic.
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No, a Thunderstang [dotancohen.com]!
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Your UID is to high to be making car analogies.
cause I didn't log in for like 2 years and lost me good one :(
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Any device manufacturer can choose how much effort they put into making an Android device difficult to hack (root and install custom roms if desired.)
Some cell phone companies and carriers make it very difficult indeed.
Barnes and Noble has gone the other route, at least with the Nook Color: it is very difficult to actually "brick" one. You can even download a microSD image and boot from that without modifying the stock B&N version of Android.
I have not followed the Nook Touch so it may be a bit differen
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I suspect that what's going on here is that B&N makes a small profit on each Nook it sells. And it would be somewhat anathema to release an ebook reader that's not tied to a specific store and then lock the thing down from such hacks. The only thing I can think of them wanting to protect is the cell connection, and even that isn't a big deal because if you use it to access sites other than their store, they just bill you for the overage.
It's hard to really say, but this is probably part of their, "we're
Unsupported country (Score:2)
Now if only Amazon would let me install the Android Kindle app in my country...
They let me my 3G Kindle, Kindle on my PC, on my Blackberry and on my iPod. But for some reason, not on the Android platform. Bummer.
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"...because Android is open." -- John Gruber
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"...because Android is open." -- John Gruber
In all fairness, it's an Amazon restriction, not an Android one. What I don't get is why they allow the other devices but restrict Android.
B&N and Nook are fairly open (Score:3)
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This, I considered getting a Kindle when I got my Nook. The hardware in both cases is quite good, the screens are manufactured by the same company and most areas are more or less identical. The two things that pushed me over to Nook were epub support and the microSD slot. Well, that and I can change the battery without much hassle.
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I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say the Kindle locks you into a proprietary format. It doesn't at all. It's true that just like books you buy from BN, Amazon Kindle books are DRMed. But the device is perfectly happy to display any .mobi file I throw at it. Thanks to Calibre I can translate back and forth between mobi and epub with ease, and stick any of my O'Reilly books on my Kindle. I also love the scripts that come with Calibre to create custom newspapers for me based on feeds from
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In what sense is MobiPocket more open than ePub, though?
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First I'd like to say that I think both the Nook and Kindle e-readers are rather solid (though I don't agree as much with the Nook Color).
While Amazon could be lying they have flat out said that it was publishers that forced them to use DRM. So I don't agree with your disingenuous painting B&N as the good guy in that respect. I think both companies blame publishers for DRM requirements on the books they sell and, at least if you look at Amazon's MP3 market, that it's probably truth.
The Kindle doesn't lo
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I think B&N as the underdog has purposely left the reader fairly open.
I honestly don't think it was intentionally left open for the purposes of rooting/repurposing. I think they kept the reference board design which normally will boot from the SD card, perhaps thinking this would help avoid bricked units down the road and better support firmware updates. That the Android community has embraced the hardware has only helped their sales and popularity. Certainly, some of those units are getting used as generic tablets and they're not buying B&N ebooks, but I don't think t
DjVu (Score:2)
Does the nook support display and search of PDF, CHM, and DjVu formats?
The DjVu format is critical for ebook readers because sooooo many books are ONLY available in DjVu. DjVu to PDF conversion is NOT an acceptable option, but a third party app should be fine.
Does it run other Android apps?
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I don't think nook or kindle support DjVu. The Kindle does do PDF I think, but depending on the PDF the results may not be that great, given the size of the screen. The only useful PDF-viewing device I've seen is the iPad, which its pinch zoom capabilities.
Most nook and kindle owners use their books primarily for casual reading. In those kind of books, I have never heard of a book that was in the DjVu format. Indeed for this kind of reading, a digital format like epub or mobi is infinitely preferable b
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The anti-aliased fonts (Score:1)
It's too bad that even with the Kindle reader you will not benefit from Amazon's patented e-ink anti-aliased fonts. These excellent fonts are the reason I own a Kindle. After using a Kindle you won't tolerate an e-ink Nook, Kobo, or other e-reader.
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The main reason why they aren't using E-ink for the color screens is that the technology isn't there yet. I'm not sure if you remember the original Gameboy Color, but the color was really bad compared with the Gameboy Advanced which took its place. It's unlikely that LCD screens will ever be as efficient as E-Ink is.
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He's got a point, though. You don't want just any TrueType font there - they all look like crap (specifically, thin elements such as serifs get blurred). This is a general problem with eInk not being 100% accurate for single-pixel precision.
What Amazon did was make fonts that don't have thin stems or serifs. They're not particularly beautiful, but they're most readable by far from anything I've seen on an eInk screen.
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....the kindle's font is Caecilla for your info. Its not made by amazon but by the linotype font forge. Presumably you could just use this on a nook or embed it in an epub.
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I have a nook and have read on a kindle. I don't see what you mean, as the kindle doesn't look any better to me, and they both look much better than most paperbacks I have read.
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The Kindle 3 has the improved fonts. It's very obvious side-by-side.
Re:"Now" you can? (Score:4, Informative)
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It's too bad you didn't parse the first sentence of the summary, "Barnes & Nobles' latest e-reader has already been hacked. The key word is "latest". You didn't even RTFS, you just read the title.
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A little harsh, aren't we? I actually did see the word latest, but I was ignorant of the Touch's existence, having skimmed over the word in the title (given the crap that's passed as headlines lately, can you really blame me?), so, as far as I knew, the Color was the latest.
I already copped to my mistake, but consider me suitably chastised again.
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Yes, I was probably in full asshole mode at that time, and I apologize. I've been randomly testy off and on of late.
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Eh, it happens. No harm done. :)
Usefulness? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Usefulness? (Score:4)
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Email, light web browsing(Hello Wikipedia...), grabbing a map and directions, that sort of thing.
Anything that depends on capacitive precision, 30FPS screen refresh, or color is going to be a waste of time, in prac
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Apparently the new Nook touch has a hidden web browser - enter a URL into the search bar and it'll load up the page.
Of course, surfing the web is painful on e-ink...
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From the vids, looks like it uses regular android keyboard when it hits a textfield. So should be ok. /too/ extreme)
Though hearing it's got a BT chip? Might be good to pair up a BT keyboard. Screen refreshes shouldn't be too bad on a console.. (though using VI on these things isn't good at the best of times, this might be a bit
Kindle Store? (Score:1)
I'm assuming the benefit of this would be to use the Kindle store, but are there books you can get from Amazon that you can't get from B&N?
Using the epub (and PDF) format, it seems to be a lot more open, I know the libraries here support the Nook but not the Kindle because of it's format.
I understand the android market being cool on the NOOKColor, but on the eink screen, I can't think of many apps working well.
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Well, suppose you already have a Kindle, and a bunch of books in your account, but want to move onto B&N offering?
Yes, there are books available in only one format (Score:1)
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it's a limitation of the e-ink screen. The periodic refreshes are needed to preserve the image on the screen,
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B&N has made a big noise about the new Nook Simple Touch Reader flashing "80% less than the original Nook." Apparently it now only flashes about once every five pages instead of every page, according to reviews. Personally, I don't find the flashes all that annoying at all in practice. They might seem annoying when you're just fooling around with the device in the store, pressing buttons and trying to see what it can do, but when you're actually reading a book you stop noticing it pretty quickly.