Nook hacked; Supports MMS and speech recognition

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from the Geek Tech blog at PCWorld.com.

It’s been a few months since the Amazon Kindle was hacked to run X applications or even Ubuntu. Over the weekend, a report came in saying the Barnes & Noble Nook e-book reader had been hacked to grant users root access, just a few days after the Android-based e-book reader was released.

Hacking the Nook is a pretty simple process involving common tools: a screwdriver, a microSD card reader, your fingernails, and a computer running Linux. The process is documented on the Nookdevs wiki (if that page doesn’t work, try the Google cache), and requires changing a boot file for the OS installed on an internal microSD card, then using the Android development kit supplied by Google to tweak a few more settings.

Looking at a list of files on the Nook shows that the best is yet to come with this e-book reader: it shipped with multimedia messaging service (MMS) support, as well as support for a speech recognition engine. Combine this with a color touchscreen, free wireless over 3G from AT&T plus Wi-Fi, a long-lasting battery, and an Android operating system and you can bet we’ll soon be seeing some rather killer applications on this device.

[ Nookdevs via Wired Gadget Lab]