Goodreads Facebook Twitter RSS Feed

Kindle: It's A Jailbreak!

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

As I mentioned the other week, I'm a confirmed Kindler now. Although the machine does have its drawbacks, one of which is that it's hard to change the built in "screensaver" images that get displayed when the machine is switched off. As I've said before it's just bizarre there isn't even an option to automatically display the cover of the book you're currently reading ...

Anyway, pretty good as the built-in images are, they had to go. There are various great posts on the internet on how to "jailbreak" your Kindle so you can tamper with things like this. Did mine today and it worked beautifully. I won't bore you with the technical details, but if you're interested I basically followed the advice in this post and used the jailbreak from this post. It's easy to do, if slightly scary. There are a couple of moments when you wonder if your Kindle is going to come back to life. And it probably invalidates the Kindle warranty. But, hey, life is short.

So, here's my Kindle now showing a map of Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age :



And showing some Hitchhiker's wisdom :



And a picture of Isaac :



Much better. Creating your own images is easy, too, so there's plenty of scope for fun ...

Posted by Simon Kewin at 08:00

13 comments:

  1. Old Kitty9 August 2011 at 11:19

    You are making Kindle so so so so attractive to me - stop it!! Isaac Asimov... swoooooon!!!!

    :-) Take care
    x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Simon Kewin9 August 2011 at 11:29

    I know! Gotta love those sideburns ...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stephanie Lorée9 August 2011 at 18:33

    Really cool post. I'm going to make this a project for this weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Simon Kewin9 August 2011 at 18:35

    Thanks, Stephanie. At your own risk, of course, but it only took 20 minutes or so and it was all done!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Golden Eagle9 August 2011 at 23:29

    If I ever get a Kindle, I will have to try that. :P

    Thanks for the links!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unknown11 August 2011 at 05:32

    Very interesting, Simon. Cool too.

    And while I'm here, belated congratulations on your July Joy from Write 1 Sub 1.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Simon Kewin11 August 2011 at 06:45

    Thanks, Steve!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous11 August 2011 at 23:03

    So stinkin' cool. I REALLY want to follow suit, but I don't know if I can summon the courage to tinker with Gizmo's innards.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Simon Kewin12 August 2011 at 07:47

    Milo,

    I know what you mean. Your call, of course, but it worked beautifully here ...

    ReplyDelete
  10. Ellie Garratt15 August 2011 at 16:17

    Now I have to jailbreak my Kindle. Thank you! I wonder what image I can get?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Simon Kewin15 August 2011 at 17:10

    Ellie,

    It has to be done!

    ReplyDelete
  12. MorningAJ19 August 2011 at 09:32

    Of course, if you use a Sony ereader that option is already available! (I have one of my own photos on display at the moment - but it's easy to change)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Simon Kewin19 August 2011 at 13:32

    MorningAJ,

    It should be easy on the Kindle too : I don't know why they make it so tricky.

    ReplyDelete

I'd love to know what you think.