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Reverse Engineer Finds Kindle's Hidden Features
bensafrickingenius writes "CNET's Crave site has an interesting article on Amazon's Kindle eBook reader, and the extensive reverse-engineering that fans of the device have accomplished. The site specifically points out the work of Igor Skochinsky at the Reversing Everything website. His work on the Kindle's Root Shell has revealed some fascinating goodies: 'Among the ones uncovered and described on his blog are a basic photo viewer, a minesweeper game, and most interesting, location technology that uses the Kindle's CDMA networking to pinpoint its position. There also are some basic location-based services that call up a Google Maps view to show where you are and nearby gas stations and restaurants.'"
...location technology that uses the Kindle's CDMA networking to pinpoint its position...
Ok, that's it I'm never buying my "Catcher in the Rye" through Kindle... (Apologies to Mel Gibson).
Shh.
What, no "Don't Panic" screen saver? Who writes these product requirements anyway?
Yertle the Turtle? Granted, my knowledge of Seuss has been waning since the first grade, but I don't remember the good Dr. at any of our underground resistance meetings.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
With an impressive servo-mechanism to turn the pages and push them real close to the screen class.
Honestly, why was it even included in the article posting? It's just a pointless summary of the content present in the original blog postings. 'course, I'm sure they appreciate the additional ad revenue...
A root password of "Fiona"? Wasn't that the name of the girl in Neal Stephenson's novel _The Diamond Age_? The one who was educated by the nanotechnological Primer book?
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
All current CDMA chipsets have location capability, due to E911 requirements for cellphones. They go through all sorts of gyrations to get a fix quickly when starting the GPS from cold (can't leave it running all the time or it would kill the battery), and to get a fix in "difficult" environments like urban canyons. They get a rough location by triangulating on cell towers, determine available satellites, doppler and code phase estimates, then tell the GPS what it should be listening for. Instead of taking several minutes from a cold start, they get a fix in a second or two.
When you get a cellphone the service agreement will say that you agree to be located if you call 911 (read it, it's there). Any other location must be initiated by you, or with your permission, due to privacy issues. I did software for dedicated CDMA location devices and users got a special service agreement from Sprint. It said if you buy and use this thing, you are agreeing to be located.
It's pretty slick.
...laura
Alt-1 show current location in google maps
Alt-2 find gas station nearby
Alt-3 find restaurants nearby
Alt-4 request department of homeland security respond to current location to investigate suspicious brown-skinned person
Alt-5 find custom keyword nearby
Alt-D dump debug info to the log and toggle highlight default item
Alt-Z toggle zone drawing and show log
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Okay, I's like to explain what makes ebook readers so bad and what needs to be done to fix them. Most Slashdotters will recall the days of the internet appliance (remember the i-opener?). What made them so bad is exactly what makes ebook readers so bad: they are only slightly less costly than computers, but are not nearly as useful. The internet appliances were essentially full computers with low specs because they only needed to browse the web. This made them almost as expensive as real computers. Their functionality was limited. They were proprietary and one had to purchase a service plan from a specific vendor. Now we see the same thing happening with ebook readers. They are as complex as computers and are just as expensive. They have limited functionality. They are proprietary. Here is the device I would like to see. A Bluetooth/USB ePaper display. Let a person's smart phone, computer render everything and tell the display what to do. The display wouldn't have to implement all sorts of complex file formats, the external device will take care of it. A display like this could be useful beyond ebooks. You might want one sitting next to your desk or in the server room displaying information. You might attach a keyboard to it with extra battery power and processing power. Maybe a bluetooth keyboard with extra battery power for charging your smart phone and ePaper display, allowing your smart phone to handle all the processing. The main point is that someone needs to produce a simple ePaper display around which others may innovate.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
I think the important thing is that the kindle tracking is a pull, not push system. That is, the kindle unit can triangulate itself, and the firmware has a hidden routine for doing that and then pulling up your location on google maps, but it's not like it's an active tracking signal that anyone can lock onto. For this thing to be used to track someone without their knowledge extra software would have to be installed that constantly relayed to an outside source with the kindles own triangulated position. As a bonus this would likely do bad things to the kindles battery life, so just keep an eye out for sudden drops in battery life following any updates.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
It is probably in the CDMA chipset anyway, since it's required by law to be included in phones. It probably would have cost them a lot more to build the device without the position sensing capability.
The market that can use these devices is any area where manuals must be referenced or should be referenced throughout the day. Think car repair. No way can anyone know everything about any car out there. Build a more sturdy form of these machines (grease/solvent/drop resistant) and let it load books on the fly from a local server. Instead of having to have bulky stations fixed throughout the center, let alone paper manuals or such, they can now follow the worker...
e-books need a business use first, then after people get used to using them at work they will want that functionality at home and that is when the sales will take off.
Besides, ironing out usage issues in a business environment is much better than a consumer market where control isn't available.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if there was a way to track lost or stolen items - especially if they contained any sort of account information whatsoever.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Seeing as how the Kindle doesn't even have a backlight, it wouldn't help with that.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.