Cries of “I am root!” abound once again with the rooting of Sony’s PRS-T1 eBook reader. The eBook Reader Blog took the original rooting directions and then looked at some of the things you can do with root access.

This hardware is based around an ePaper display, but we must say that the performance seems to be fantastic. There may be a few missing features from the original user interface (like how pages are turned) that can be fixed with root access, but we think it’s the added Android access that makes this worth it. In the video after the break you’ll see that you can drop through to the Android 2.2 desktop and install any application you’re interested in using. This is a multi-touch display so it’s well suited for navigation although applications don’t work well yet because of excessive screen refreshing. But we’re sure that will improve with time. Of note is the ability to play music through apps like Pandora, and the ability to load content from other providers like Amazon books via the Kindle app.

Every time we write one of these rooted features we can’t help but think back to this I’m a Mac spoof video…. you’ll see why in the last few seconds.

[Thanks Nathan]

[Rossum's] still coming up with great ways to use his microtouch hardware. This time, he’s taken his inspiration from Amazon’s announcement that a full-color eBook reader (and movie player) is on the way. Judging from the video after the break, his fully functional reader is a big win for the device.

You’re probably familiar with the hardware, an ATmega644-based board connected to a touch sensitive LCD screen. You can make your own or buy one pre-assembled (but currently out-of-stock). The board has a microSD card slot making it quite easy to add books to the device. At the start of the project [Rossum] thought he might be able to read ePub files directly, but the embedded images, and unzip function needed to open the package file is a bit too much for the 8-bit processor’s restrictions. One simple step does the trick. A helper script can be used to format the files before transferring them to the device. This does the unzipping, scales the images, and repaginates the text into a format friendly for the display size.

Now if we only had a nice little case to house the hardware we’d be in business.

[Armin Tamzarian’s] local library recently started lending eBooks via the OverDrive Media Console system. He checked out a couple of books, which got him thinking about how the copy protection scheme was implemented. He wondered what recourse users had if they wanted to view a book they have already checked out on a different, or unsupported piece of hardware.

His research centers around Adobe’s ADEPT digital rights management scheme, which is used to protect the books offered on loan by OverDrive. The topic is broken down into three parts, starting with an introduction to the EPUB file structure, the OverDrive Media Console, as well as the aforementioned ADEPT DRM scheme.

The second part takes a close look at the OverDrive Media Console itself, where he uses the ineptkey and ineptepub utilities written by [I♥CABBAGES] to pull the RSA cipher keys from the EPUB data he uncovered. When he then tries to strip the ADEPT DRM layer from his books however, he discovers that OverDrive is using a non-compliant version of the ADEPT standard, which renders existing tools useless.

The final part of [Armin’s] discussion digs even deeper into the OverDrive Console’s inner workings, where he finds that the OverDrive Media Console stores quite a bit of information in an SQLite database. After a bit of digging, he finds all the data he needs to strip the DRM from his books. [Armin] also took the time to wrap all of his findings up into a neat little tool called OMCStrip, which as you may have guessed, strips the DRM from ADEPT-protected eBooks with ease.

We got a pleasant letter from [Eric Willhelm], the owner of Instructables. He wanted to shoot a token of good will our direction, in the form of an EPUB of some of the projects we’ve linked to in the last quarter of 2010. These are Ad-free and have all images included. You can download it and view it on the e-reader of your choice, or even in your browser with the appropriate plugin.  The videos still link back to Instructables, but he thought our readership might enjoy having an ad-free experience. He says that link should work for about a month.

For those who really want ad free content and are willing to pay for it, Instructables has been putting out publications that are collections of instructables on certain topics. For example, [Eric] pointed out that they’ve compiled some that might be of interest to us like “Better living through microcontrollers” and “Amazing LED Projects“. Actually, there are a bunch of titles and it looks like some are free as well.

Thanks [Eric], I’m sure your actions gained a little respect, even from those who dislike Instructables generally due to ads and registration.

[Mr C Camacho] picked up an inexpensive digital picture frame hoping to hack into it. He hasn’t had the time to crack open the hardware so that it will do his bidding but he did find a creative way to make it an ebook reader. Using a python script he processes books, creating images of the pages.

The python script, available after the break, takes free books from Project Gutenburg and spits out JPG images. Page turning and bookmarking are not what they ought to be but the process does work. The thought of someone staring at a picture frame on the subway is a bit amusing but we’re sure that sooner or later someone will ask if it’s a new version of the Kindle.

Usage explanation from the developer:

./process.py book.txt 480 234 16 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-droid/DroidSansMono.ttf 10 7

param

1   book.txt       the file name
2   480              native X resolution of picture frame
3   234              native Y resolution of picture frame
4   16                Number of vertical lines of text required
5   blah.ttf        full path and name of a ttf font
6   10                font size to use for lines
7   7                  font size for “page no x” at bottom of page

you’ll have to play with it to get it to work right for your size of screen

(its just a hack ;) )
The main thing to get right first is the font size of the width of the screen
from there you can work out the number of lines you can fit…

#!/usr/bin/python

import pygameimport sys

# ./process.py book.txt 480 234 16 /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-droid/DroidSansMono.ttf 10 7

txtname=sys.argv[1]nativeX=int(sys.argv[2])nativeY=int(sys.argv[3])pagelines=int(sys.argv[4])fontname=sys.argv[5]fontsize=int(sys.argv[6])pagenosize=int(sys.argv[7])

f=open(txtname)

def cleanline(l): l=l.strip('\r') l=l.strip('\n') return l

pygame.init()screen = pygame.display.set_mode((nativeX, nativeY))lines=f.readlines()font = pygame.font.Font(fontname, fontsize)pfont = pygame.font.Font(fontname, pagenosize)

for ln in range(len(lines)/pagelines+1): background = pygame.Surface(screen.get_size()) background = background.convert() background.fill((255, 255, 255))

 for pl in range(16): if (ln*16+pl)<len(lines): line=cleanline(lines[ln*pagelines+pl]) text = font.render(line, 1, (0, 0, 0)) textpos = text.get_rect(x=4,y=pl*(nativeY/pagelines)) background.blit(text, textpos) text=pfont.render("Page "+str(ln+1),1,(0,0,0)) textpos=text.get_rect(x=8,y=nativeY-pagenosize) background.blit(text,textpos) screen.blit(background, (0, 0)) pygame.display.flip() fn="page%#05d" % (ln+1) pygame.image.save(background,fn+".jpg")

Ding-dong, the DRM is gone. But not in the way we really want. The copy protection scheme that is used for most Kindle books has been cracked. We’d much prefer it hadn’t been there in the first place but then there’d be no challenge for security hackers.

Giving credit for the advancement gets a little messy. Apparently two folks figured this out at approximately the same time. [Labba] posted about his discoveries while [I (heart) Cabbages] wrote about his exploits in a blog entry. Either way, you can now strip the protection and use your legally-purchased books on any device you choose by using this Python script.

This means that both Kindle and Nook have had their DRM broken. Are these companies really trying to prevent copying (fair use) or do they just want to be able to tell the publishers that there are copy protections while turning a blind eye to what happens in the privacy of your personal computer?

[Thanks Sanchoooo via Slashdot]

[Andrew] wanted a tablet computer but is tired of waiting for Apple to come up with one. eBay and Craig’s list to the rescue, he picked up some parts and built his own tablet. You can take a look at the video tour of it after the break, or peruse parts one, two, three, and four of his work log.

The unit is assembled from a 500 MHz iBook. [Andrew] picked up a touchscreen from ebay and canibalized a USB joystick in order to add some buttons to the keyboard-less design. The end product is quite nice. We’ve wanted a tablet computer to hang on the wall for a long time and this may be the inspiration that gets us there.

Do you find this didn’t satisfy your Apple tablet fix? There’s more to be seen in our mac tablets roundup.

[Cory Doctorow] has published a novel about the near future and a couple of hackers who can make anything from the stuff lying around. We like a good sci-fi novel, and have no shortage of recommendations (go read Snow Crash) for those who need them. We’re adding ‘Makers’ to our must read list.

Not only is this book about you, but its release most likely agrees with your life philosophy. You can download this book, right now, for free, legally. This is because it has been release under the creative commons license. Best of all, if you like the book and want to make a donation, you are directed to purchase a book on behalf of a school or other program that has requested a copy but doesn’t have the funds to acquire it themselves.

So, buy the book if you want a physical copy, download it if you prefer that method, but either way we think this is better than stealing the printed word.

The people at iFixit have shown that they’re still on top of their game by tearing down the new Kindle 2 eBook reader. The main processor is a 532MHz ARM-11 from Freescale. Interestly, there isn’t any significant circuitry behind the large keyboard; it seems its existence is just to hide the battery.

Related: previous teardowns on Hack a Day

[via Make]

The project is far from completion, still in the midst of its first objective: building the case. [Bismar] cut an old Lian Li case for the aluminum base, then made sure the motherboard from the Eee fit properly. The next major step was bending and cutting an acrylic sheet to form the exterior of the case. He hit a few snags bending the sheet, but forum members offered some ideas on how to do this effectively. The project is still rolling along, and we’ll be sure to show you the Tabeee MK1 when it is finished.