Reverse Engineer Finds Kindle's Hidden Features
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jan 04, 2008 01:01 PM
from the under-the-hood dept.
from the under-the-hood dept.
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.'"
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Hands-On With The Kindle 365 comments
Amazon's Kindle e-book may have sold out in record time, but there's still a lot of discussion about the device's merits. Neil Gaiman likes it well enough, but it's sent Robert Scoble into a fit of apoplectic rage. For a real, meaty, hands-on look at the way the device operates in everyday life, Gamers With Jobs writer Julian Murdoch has a slice of life with the Kindle. He takes us through his Thanksgiving holiday weekend with the device, noting the quirks (good and bad) that cropped up with Amazon's new toy. "Short of reading in the tub, the Kindle is easier to read in more places, positions, and situations than a physical book ... But it's far from perfect. It is expensive. The cover, which I find completely necessary, is in desperate need of more secure attachment (Velcro works great). The book selection is less-than-perfect, although I imagine this will improve with every passing day. And Amazon needs marketing help. The Kindle's launch reeked of 'get it out fast.' The big-picture marketing efforts (like video demonstrations and blurbs from authors) were great, but simple things like communicating how freakin' easy it is to get non-Amazon content on to the device, for free, remain horribly misunderstood."
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Flagged. (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, that's it I'm never buying my "Catcher in the Rye" through Kindle... (Apologies to Mel Gibson).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flagged. (Score:5, Informative)
Good movie, although a bit date today [imdb.com]
Saver? (Score:4, Funny)
instide there is a real printed book (Score:5, Funny)
Why bother with the Crave article at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why bother with the Crave article at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst is when you have a blog linking to a blog linking to the original info. FFS people...
The net effect is old news gets constantly recycled and real news gets diluted. How many times have you seen a new blog post about something that actually happened months ago? The "9V battery contains AAAA cells" thing stands out as the most recent example for me: here [makezine.com] (2 Jan 2008), here [edn.com] (9 Jan 2007), here [blogspot.com] (3 Jan 2007), here [lifehacker.com] (23 Dec 2006). You have a "story" at LEAST a year old that has been copied verbatim at least four times!
Original here [axecollector.com] (No date) as far as I can tell, since all of the above blogs link to it.
Plus, all of these blogs have comment sections, which make them twice as redundant because the comments themselves also fail to add anything most of the time. If they do you'll never find them because there are so many other palces that run the same "story."
Fight the watering down of information! NEVER link to a blog unless it provides something EXTRA to the news! ALWAYS take a few minutes to get as close to the original source as possible! If you run a blog yourself, work to ADD to articles you link to - personal thoughts, additional information, insightful discussion on the topic at hand - be UNIQUE. That's how you get a readership... by having something worth reading.
=Smidge=
Re:Why bother with the Crave article at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is still no excuse for not adding to it. You can copy an article verbatim and still improve it's value by making some addition to it, either as a personal comment, further research into the topic, or a retrospective analysis of the article itself.
The "Information Revolution" is more like an "Information Echo Box" - Plagarism is not revolutionary.
=Smidge=
"Fiona"? (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:"Fiona"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cellphone CDMA location (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are they really "triangulating" using cell towers? Or are they doing something like finding a rough area for the phone by which the cell the phone is associated with and which towers can see the phone? So if towers X, Y,and Z can see your phone, but X ha
Re:Cellphone CDMA location (Score:5, Informative)
Do a search for "AFLT". They estimate the travel time from multiple cell towers (easy with CDMA) and work from there. They call it triangulation, though it's a lot closer to hyperbolic navigation.
...laura
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They're watching you! (Score:4, Funny)
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
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Layne
eBook readers are all wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:eBook readers are all wrong (Score:5, Funny)
<p>
Thanks to that first sentence, I read the rest of your insightful comment with a really freakin annoying Jar Jar Binks voice.
<p>
Thanks
PS
Meesa gonna upmod yousa comment, since Isa hava mod points...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, they are aimed at the wrong market (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A bluetooth monitor? Bluetooth can transmit at up to 2.1 Mbit/s. DVI can transmit 3.7 Gbit/s in single-link mode and 7.4 Gbit/s in dua
Re:Tracking Hardware?!?!?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nope... (Score:3, Informative)