Hasta La Gadget!

The Nook hacking frenzy seems to be as active as the first wild days of iPhone cracking, with new news arriving all the time. Now owners of the Barnes & Noble e-reader can “jailbreak” the device without having to open it up.

Previously, to gain full root access to the internals of the Nook’s Android operating system meant grabbing a screwdriver and physically popping out the internal microSD card on which the OS resides. Now, thanks to a tiny 7.5k download, you can do all the dirty work from the comfort of your computer’s file browser.

The file, called bravo_update.dat, comes in the soft-root package, and can be downloaded from the currently bandwidth-buffeted nookDevs site. All you do is pop another microSD card into the external slot, copy across the file via USB cable and eject. Switch the Nook off and on, immediately holding down both page-turn buttons.

This forces the Nook to run a firmware updater which does what the hardware hack did before (change a word in the operating system’s init.rc file). Now, after grabbing the Google Android developers kit to run on your computer, you are good to hack.

Needless to say, this will probably void your warranty, but it should work with all versions of the Nook firmware, including the two-day-old v1.1.0. The nookDevs team is also working on adding Nook-friendly software: first up should be an email application, coming in the next few days.

nookDevs root enabler for nook [nookDevs]

See Also:

• Nook E-Reader Gets Hacked to Run Apps, Browser
• Nook Torn Open, Hacked, Rooted
• Barnes & Noble Improves Nook With Firmware Update

Barnes & Noble has rolled out the first firmware update for its Nook e-book reader that includes performance updates in areas such as page turning of e-books and formatting of downloaded books.

The $260 Nook, which started shipping earlier this month, was criticized for its slow refresh rate as users flipped pages and for a software interface that didn’t entirely seem ready, as Wired.com pointed out in its Nook review.

The firmware update 1.1.0 attempts to fix some of these problems. The update improves the start-up time for features such as ‘My Library’ on the device. It also ensures that the device displays the correct time on its status bar, has better page numbering for books and removes some formatting-related issues.

Meanwhile, some users have ‘rooted’ the Nook or hacked the device’s firmware to gain system level access. This allows them to run on the Nook apps such as Pandora, a browser and other programs that Barnes & Noble does not support officially.

The latest firmware update does not lock the rooted Nooks, says nookDevs, a group that has created a wiki and an online forum for Nook enthusiasts. “The update is safe, if you’ve had your device already rooted,” says the group on its website. “It will stay this way.”

But that’s if you got a Nook in the first place. With some customers worried that their pre-ordered Nooks won’t arrive in time for Christmas, Barnes & Noble has sent an e-mail promising a $100 gift voucher to anyone whose Nook doesn’t make it.

See Also:

• Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen ‘Nook’ E-Reader
• Barnes & Noble Delays Nook Shipments To Stores
• Nook Torn Open, Hacked, Rooted

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Stanza, the iPhone e-book reader so good that Amazon bought it, has just released v2.0, and it improves on 1.x in almost every way.

Stanza was the first good e-book reading application for the iPhone, and this release keeps it at the top of the bunch. At first glance, the new feature list looks short, but when you start to poke around you discover that the polish that has been applied to the app makes every part easier to use. First, the official list:

Tabbed navigation

This simply adds a row of buttons along the top of catalog and settings screens to help find you way around. It doesn’t apply when reading, nor should it.

Copy to Clipboard in Annotation View

This single line hides a revamped annotation engine. Sure, now you can copy chunks of text, but you can also zoom pictures, share your notes (or the copied text) via Twitter or e-mail (or Facebook, if you have to), and easily define words via online dictionary.

Sharing

You can also show off how far you are into a book via Twitter and Facebook. Lord knows why, but it is there if you want it.

Unified Setting Screen

This is partially true. Those of you who learned to navigate the labyrinthine sections of the old Stanza will not be wasting that practice. It seems that the settings are, far from being unified, still scattered all over the place.

More

Not mentioned in these notes is a new text-resizer, which actually resizes the whole page as you pinch until you are happy, and then only reformats the text when you click to confirm. If you were ever frustrated by the old way which would reformat after every pinch, and always seemed to get the size wrong, you will be very happy.

In fact, this kind of polish is what marks the 2.0 update. You can now assign custom categories to your books easily, as well as creating your own collections (think playlists for books). You can assign artwork, either by searching on the web (it is automatic) or by importing from your iPhone photo library.

Further, the online catalogs have been separated into official and unofficial, so if you have added any (ahem) third-party repositories, they are kept away from the legit stuff.

One pain, and something nobody seems to have worked out yet, is that you have to leave the application to buy anything, getting dumped into Safari to input credit card or login details. A minor point, we suppose, but it certainly stops the candy-store buying approach we’re used to with iPhone applications and music. It is probably inevitable with Stanza, though, as it supports so many different online stores.

Should you download it? If you are already a Stanza user, it’s likely you already did as soon as you heard about the update. If you’re not a Stanza user, go get it now. It’s free.

Stanza [Lexcycle]

Stanza in the App Store [iTunes]

There is little doubt that electronic books have gone mainstream. The question now is, in just which direction will the market go? It’s possible that the Kindle will do what Apple and the iPod did for music, essentially owning the market. Or things could split open, with many sellers competing on an open platform. Kobo is betting on the latter.

Kobo is a rebranded Shortcovers, which sells e-books that can be read on almost any device, from Macs and PCs to the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Palm Pre and any e-reader that can work with EPUB-format books, such as the Barnes & Noble Nook or the Sony Reader. Notably, the Kindle is absent from the list.

Shortcovers has been selling e-books for a while, but the rebranding to Kobo marks the first serious alternative to the Kindle as a platform. Kobo has teamed up with Borders, REDgroup Retail and Instant Fame, which to you and me means that the books are available almost worldwide, in the United States, Canada, the EU, the U.K., Australia and the Asia Pacific region. In fact, Borders will be incorporating Kobo into its store later next year. Kobo is also adding 1.8 million public-domain books from the Internet Archive.

To accompany the launch, there are a slew of new applications. I tried out the new iPhone app, which is, like the Shortcovers app before it, free. You log in with your existing Shortcovers ID and from there you can browse, sample and buy books.

Apart from a name change, Kobo has some new features. Now you can browse by category, choose from a new Top-50 e-books list, New York Times bestsellers, Oprah’s book-club picks and more. The app also has recommended reading lists (right now there is a “Season’s Readings” section, and a splendid “Canadian, eh” list) and a better search function.

It’s very easy to browse, and the Kobo app puts Amazon’s rushed-out Kindle for iPhone application to shame. It’s all done with full artwork for covers, and usually you can read the first chapter of a book (although a lot of the time, you only get to read the end-matter and not any actual content). Reading books is equally elegant, and greatly cleaned-up since the original Shortcovers app. Page turning is animated and actually looks like paper pages flipping.

But when you come to make a purchase, things go slightly awry. By now, most of us are used to in-app purchases on the iPhone, so getting bounced out of Kobo and tossed into a credit card form in Safari is an annoying shock. Once you have laboriously input your details, you are sent back to the Kobo app where your book is waiting for you. It would be more convenient if Kobo took advantage of the iTunes App Store’s ability to complete purchases within the app, with billing handled by Apple.

Subsequent transactions go smoother, and you only need to input your password to buy (it still requires a round-trip to Safari, though).

This reliance on Safari is, we assume, both a way to get around Apple’s 30 percent cut and also to make the experience the same across platforms. And speaking of platforms, only the iPhone and Blackberry have the updated applications so far, with the rest “coming soon.”

Kobo is so far the best and most comprehensive service we have used to buy and read books, especially for non-U.S. residents. It is still flawed, and it is a royal pain that Kindle won’t support EPUB books. But with its platform-agnostic approach, huge catalog and new heavyweight partners, we expect to see Kobo grow fast.

In fact, I’m pretty certain that my next e-book reader will not be a Kindle.

World, Meet Kobo! [Kobo blog]

Kobo Product page [Kobo]

Kobo for iPhone [iTunes]

Amazon’s Kindle for iPhone application is now available internationally, in “over 60 countries”. The catch is that it it still only localized in English.

When the Kindle e-reader was launched internationally back in October, one of the many aspects that Amazon left out in the rush to make some Christmas money was the iPhone application which allows Kindle owners to continue reading on their iPhones. We posted a workaround to get the app from outside the US, but as it involved creating a US account at the iTunes Store it was far from ideal. Now Amazon has fixed things with the long-awaited international launch of Kindle for iPhone.

Amazon doesn’t show much love for its overseas customers (shipping the Kindle with a US power-cord adapter, for example), but we suspect that Amazon’s xenophobia isn’t the only aspect to this delay. Its more likely that Apple’s long-winded (read “broken”) App Store approval process was a major culprit. The release notes for this version show nothing more than the addition of worldwide support. Given that the US version works fine in Europe with a Spanish Kindle account, we doubt that Amazon did much ore than re-submit the app to Apple.

Still, it’s here at last. Maybe now Amazon can concentrate on adding some non-English-language books to the Kindle store.

Kindle for iPhone [iTunes]

See Also:

• Kindle Goes International — With a Little Help From AT&T
• Crippleware Alert! International Kindle Gets No Web Access Outside …
• International Kindle Now Shipping: The Good, the Bad and the …
• How To Get the iPhone Kindle App Outside the U.S.