GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Nook Touch Rooting. Theses three words are more suggestive of dubious sexual practices than hardware hacking. Add in two more words — Angry Birds — and things get a lot more exciting.

YouTuber and Android hacker JFreke has rooted (the Android version of jailbreaking) Barnes & Noble’s new touch-screen e-reader and installed Angry Birds. It is almost impossible to play, thanks to limits iof processing power and the slow-updating e-ink screen, but it is amazing nonetheless. Check out the video: Read More…

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Image via BarnesAndNoble.com

Oh, you thought we were just all up in Amazon’s Kindle on the tweed beat here at Gadget Lab? NOT TRUE. The newest iteration of Barnes & Noble’s Nook offered Wi-Fi only before Kindle, dropped its prices before Kindle — and yes, it was jailbroken and rooted a long time ago.

Major advantage to rooting a Nook over jailbreaking a Kindle: because the Nook runs Android, you can use it to run Android apps. Popular Science’s gadget blog isn’t the first to describe how it’s done, but this guide is one of the most readable I’ve seen — just five steps.

It’s all software-based, requiring you to first connect your Nook to your computer via USB, downgrade your firmware to version 1.0, and then install the hacked/rooted version of 1.4, which includes an Android app installer. However, as Nook-rooting experts NookDevs.com note, “Barnes and Noble has likely introduced a new hardware revision which bricks your unit if you install their official 1.0.0 Firmware (A step needed to root). As of right now, Nooks with serial #s starting with 1003 (running firmware 1.4.1) cannot be rooted, and should NOT be attempted.” This warning is on top of the usual watch-yourself-you-might-break-something caution whenever you mess around with your devices. Be careful out there.

How to Add Applications to Your Nook [Apartment Therapy Unpluggd]

Source:wired.com

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If you haven’t heard of the Insignia Infocast, a photos and apps viewer billed as an “internet media display,” it may be time to give this device a second look.

The Infocast has enough hardware chops and an Linux-based operating system to transform it into a kind of a tablet. Some electronics hackers have tweaked it to run a Webkit-based browser and use the device’s native capability to run apps. It’s no iPad but the hack is intriguing.

At $170, the Insignia Infocast is cheap enough to experiment with. The device has a 800 MHz processor, 2 GB memory, a 8-inch LCD touch screen, Wi-Fi connectivity and two USB 2.0 ports. The gadget runs Chumby Linux 2.6 operating system.

“While its marketed as a device for viewing Chumby apps and sharing photos,” says Bunnie Huang, founder at Chumby on his blog, “as far as the DIY crowd is concerned, the Infocast is a Linux machine.”

Since Apple iPads debut in April, the popularity of tablets has surged. Apple sold 2 million iPads in just 60 days of the products launch. Other companies such as Samsung and Dell have introduced tablets. Even DIYers now have the option to put together a tablet for $400 using a BeagleBoard kit.

Hacking the Infocast falls somewhere in between buying an off-the-shelf slick product like the iPad and putting together a tablet from a starter kit.

The Infocast already has some of the software pieces that consumers may want in a tablet such as access to limited apps. These apps include online radio services such as Pandora, media content such as NY Times podcast, photos and videos.

But to take the device to the next level, developers have ported a user interface framework that runs Webkit–the browser engine that powers Safari and Chrome among others.

If you want to take a shot at it, there are instructions on the Chumby wiki and more information on Huang’s blog. For text input, though, you will have to use an USB keyboard plugged into the device.

This is just “scratching the surface on what you can do with the platform,” says Huang. Open source hardware enthusiasts are working on plans to port Android OS on the device.

The catch here is that the Infocast doesn’t have a built-in battery so it has to remain tethered to the wall socket. Still, for intrepid DIYers that shouldn’t be much of a roadblock. There must be a hack for that too.

Photos: Bunnie Huang/Bunnie: Studios

[via Hack a Day]

Source:wired.com

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Don’t type when you can talk, says Google. The search giant has strengthened its existing voice command feature on Android and introduced a new application called Chrome-to-Phone, for syncing with Chrome browsers.

Voice Search, despite its name, now lets you do more than just search: It will let users send texts, compose e-mails, call businesses, navigate, jot notes, and set the alarm on their phone by just speaking into the device.

The voice commands, called “voice actions,” are part of Google’s effort to improve the user interface on Android and let consumers go beyond the traditional keyboard and touchscreen interface on their phones.

The Voice Search application is currently available only for phones running version 2.2 of the Android OS — which means HTC Evo, Droid X and Droid 2 users can get it on their phones immediately.

Google also launched a mobile sync app to link its Chrome browser to Android 2.2 devices. The tool, called Chrome-to-Phone, lets users on Google’s Chrome browser click an icon to send a web page or a map to their phone. The page or map is then almost immediately available on the phone.

“This is a low-latency, super-fast app for pushing data to the phone,” says Dave Burke, engineering manager for Google.

Google debuted its voice search application in the U.S. about two years ago when it introduced Android. Now one out of every four queries, or 25 percent of queries, on devices running Android 2.0 OS and higher comes through the voice interface, says Google.

The earlier version of the voice command allowed users to do just three things: web search, call a specific contact and navigate to an address.

The new voice search app goes beyond that. For instance, you can speak the name of a song or a band into the phone and the app will go online, find the music and show a list of apps such as Pandora and last.fm that can play the music you want.

For more details, check out Google’s list of voice commands available through the app.

But when it comes to the Chrome-to-Phone app, the service is more limited. It is currently available to only Chrome users, though some Firefox users are also using it. The sync feature is also only available for Android devices, though Google says it will work to bring the feature to iPhone users as an app.

Image: Screenshots of Voice Search courtesy Google.

Source:wired.com

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