Rooting the Nook Simple Touch Reader

I rooted my Nook Simple Touch Reader (STR) in order to gain some Kindle features via the Kindle app. But the experience left much to be desired. I am not sure why people root it - well, maybe because they don't have a Nook Color lying around to do the things I use it to do. But with a Nook Color around the house, it doesn't make any sense to root the Nook STR. I bought it for reading epubs comfortably like a book and it does the job fairly well.

However, I do not like the way dictionary works. I like the way Kindle does it much better. On the Nook STR, you touch and hold a word and then touch Look Up to see its meaning. The dictionary definitions are not as good as on the Kindle but that is a separate gripe. But anyway, on the Kindle, you touch or click a word and it shows the meaning in a section of the screen right away. You have the option to highlight and take notes etc. I like that way better than the Nook STR.

For the record, I used the TouchNooter on the STR (Google it, instructions are everywhere) and it rooted it without any fuss. But then to get the Kindle app was a much harder than it should be. The market doesn't work unless you wait a day and I just didn't want to do that (but eventually did). So I tried the Amazon app store, copying the apk, restoring Titanium backup (you need to install Titanium backup first so, no go) and other tricks. However, it was a thoroughly frustrating experience so I ended up just waiting. And finally when I installed the Kindle app, the layout was so bad that I immediately decided to unroot the STR and go back to stock. Yes I know stock reader works just the same with a rooted STR but I did not want any of the rooted mess making the device act weird.

Unrooting was a different battle. I tried the 8 failed reboots first and that restored the device to factory setting BUT it was exactly the same as before. Then I tried a restore image and that did the factory restore again but I had the same problem again. I looked for another restore image on XDA but the link was dead. Then I tried to Unregister and Reset the device and that did the trick. After a reboot, the Nook STR was good as brand new.

I think I will use the Nook STR as stock for a little while since it gets the job done but I will look for a good deal on the Kindle Keyboard or the Kindle Touch and then sell the Nook STR.

Nook Color - Thoughts

Writing this down to help someone else make up their mind if they are debating getting a Nook Color. I own an iPhone and a Sony Reader PRS 350. So my opinions maybe biased. And I have had the Nook Color (NC) for all of 3 days.

First, the executive summary for the impatient: I like it.

Now the details for the non-Executive. I bought the NC for reading PDF's. The Sony Reader is the best in class for handling PDF's but it falls short. There are numerous things you can do to make PDF's look acceptable, but after a while, it gets frustrating. On the NC, you basically load and go.

Unfortunately, the built in PDF reader on the NC has a few shortcomings too. When in landscape mode, which is the only way to actually read a PDF book, there is no way to page up. You have to scroll the page by dragging it and it is not ideal. Enter a third party application ezPDFReader. It is available from the Nook Marketplace for 99 cents and can be downloaded from the Android marketplace too. It allows you to tap bottom right corner to page up your PDF. That gives me near perfect PDF reading experience. There are other features in the app which make it superior to built-in PDF reader in every way.

I removed the stock Barnes and Noble interface and replaced it with the CM7 mod the very first day. I liked the stock UI. A lot. But I couldn't justify not using the hardware to its full potential. Specifically, CM7 allows you to:

- Overclock the device to run flash smoother
- Watch Youtube videos
- Watch streaming Netflix

On the downside, you lose the excellent Barnes and Noble UI with a library view of all your books and a couple of decent games it came with: Sudoku and Crossword. I didn't miss the games too much but the UI was excellent and I missed it once it was gone.

CM7 comes with a ADW Launcher which is awful IMHO. Of course I am used to an iPhone so you mileage will vary. But I got Launcher Pro and without any widgets or other Android gunk, it looks and acts almost like an iPhone. I like to keep things simple.

GV Mobile+ vs Google Voice App on the iPhone

I have been using the GV Mobile+ app since before the official Google Voice app was available on the iPhone. It had a few shortcomings but overall was very pleasing and useful app. Yesterday I saw a Lifehacker.com article that said it has been upgraded to support push notifications. That was one of the shortcomings as it was impossible to know when you received a new text. Even though I had a workaround, I wanted the upgrade. The problem: it broke on updating. It dropped my credentials and the new version of the app would not sign in. After searching Google, deleting and reinstalling the app, when nothing worked, I tried the official Google Voice app. I thought I was going to keep it until GV Mobile+ developer fixed the app. But it turns out, the official Google Voice app does everything GV Mobile+ app did - and more!

For starters, there are push notifications of text messages. It also shows the transcripts of your voice mail. Its interface is slightly different but I am sure I will get used to it. It is still a very pleasing interface for a very useful service.

Quitting Facebook

I quit Facebook after using it for nearly 5 years yesterday. When I joined they used to not allow free web based emails to sign up. I enjoyed my time on the site through all the privacy issues reported in the press. I never put too much information on the site so did not have much to fear. But it was getting to be a hassle to keep up with all the privacy "gotchas." However, that is not what precipitated the change.

Yesterday I saw a link posted in my friend feed which seemed out of place. The headline said something like 99 out of a 100 people found this funny. It had a little risque photo underneath and it was from a friend who I wouldn't associate with posting risque stuff like that. So I clicked on it thinking it was a joke he found funny.

The tab that opened had a grayed out video and a small popup asking me to take a survey. The popup did not have a cancel or a no button. And it was not a window that could be closed. So I am not sure if I clicked the survey link or not but even if I did, I closed the entire tab quickly without waiting for the video or submitting any survey.

A few hours later I accessed Facebook on my iPhone and there were posts from "Eyes Never Lie" with similar risque photos and random lines. There were many comments on those status updates. It seemed odd and at first I thought Facebook had mixed up some random "friend" in my feed. After a few minutes of putting the phone down, it didn't feel right. So I picked it up again and started poking around. That is when I realized it may have something to do with the link I clicked this morning.

I got concerned and logged in from another PC. I first searched for some "Facebook virus" that may be trending. Then I looked for "Eyes Never Lie" hoping it would be trending. But neither returned any useful link. Well, the first search did return some info on Koobface virus and explained the activity to be similar to what I saw.

So I logged into Facebook and checked my account settings. Much to my dismay I was showing as "Liking" three pages I never clicked Like on. In fact I never click that button so putting anything there was wrong. My wall also showed a risque image with a link to cute-girl.info website.

That just killed it for me. I posted a warning to others and asked them if they saw some shady activity from my Facebook account. I waited six hours but by the end of the day, it was becoming clear to me that I will hve to quit Facebook. I just did not need any nonsense like that. Facebook was responsible for putting their users in this situation. They could have avoided that with tighter privacy controls.

It is like Windows in a way. Facebook now is like Windows XP of 2002. It was not Microsoft's fault that Windows was the target of malicious software writers all over the world.  It was the dominant operating system so everyone wanted to target it. But Microsoft could have made Windows more secure to avoid the situation in the first place. The analogy is not perfect because Windows has longer release cycles. So when Windows XP was released they made security mistakes but they could not fix those until Windows Vista's release. But Facebook has much shorter release cycles and should/could have done plenty to avoid this situation already.

Goodbye Facebook. Let us see what Google has to offer.

Bookmarking solutions

After delicious.com (del.icio.us) was reported shutting down last month, I started looking for a replacement service. My requirements are simple:

1. Synchronized bookmark across machines
2. Easy bookmarking and bookmark management
3. Online access

Surprisingly, delicious.com with a Firefox extension was fitting all these needs perfectly.  But Yahoo's uncertain future plans made me nervous and I started looking for alternatives.

At about the same time, I switched to using Chrome and liked its speed and synching features across machines.  However, its bookmarking still left a lot to be desired.  About a month into using Chrome, I got fed-up with its inability to block ads and certain audio clips from playing.  I never had these problem with years of Firefox usage.  So I decided to go back to using Firefox 4 (beta, at the time of this writing).

Firefox 4 fixes the speed issue bringing it almost on par with Chrome.  Sync is built-in like Chrome.  Unfortunately, it does not let you access the bookmarks online.  So I started looking again.

My bookmarks fall in two categories:

1. I store some commonly accessed websites on the bookmarks ribbon for quick access
2. I save some websites for referring back later

The first category is well served by Firefox Sync.  Since I need the quick-click ribbon to look the same across machines, I drag the site's address to the ribbon and have it show up on all my machines.  To be honest, this feature was not available to me before I discovered Chrome Sync.  So my previous (delicious.com) setup was lacking this.  But Firefox 4 and Chrome handle this without any issues.

The second category is where I am having troubles.  There are a bunch of extensions (Diigo, Xmarks are the more popular ones) that store your bookmarks and allow online access, but I don't want a repeat of delicious.com so I don't want to get stuck with a bad or failing service.  I also looked at the import and export options these services provide and I was not too happy.

For these reasons I want to keep my category 2 Bookmarks with Google.  The only problem is, Google does not make it easy to add or manage these Bookmarks from any browser including Chrome.  I installed the Google Toolbar extension in Firefox and even that does not provide a good interface to manage the bookmarks.  All it gives me is the ability to add bookmarks to Google with ease.  And to do that, I have to give up a lot of room on my browser because running the extension in compact mode hides the Bookmark button.

Frustrated, I searched the web and finally found a javascript button on Google Bookmarks FAQ.

I changed the text to be a plus sign to save screen real estate.  You can drag it to the bookmarks ribbon if you like.  It allows you to save links to your Google Bookmarks.  You are still stuck with Google's lousy interface for managing those bookmarks but until I find time to write a nicer UI for it, you will have to make do with that!

Words I hate: Automagically

99% of the time, replacing the word "automagically" with "automatically" in the text you are reading makes more sense.  Writers tend to forget that it is a made up word that adds nothing to the language except cuteness -- if you are 10 years old.

I beg all the writers of the world to stop using "automagically" and let it fall off the face of the planet automatically!

My Photo Workflow

I am a Nikon [D50] user and have gone through a lot of tools over a period of about 3 to 4 years of shooting raw (NEF) pictures.  Only now, I have more or less settled on the tools of my choice and have developed a stable workflow.  So I want to talk about what I like to do and how I do it in this post with the hopes of helping someone else facing similar decisions.  You can write in the comments section if there is something you like or hate about my workflow.  Or if you have any questions.

First off, I manage all the images in Finder (or Explorer) myself.  I do not like any digital asset management (DAM) software.  There are way too many of these DAM software and they do not inter-operate. And the value they add is iffy at best, in my humble opinion.

For the longest time, I used ACDSee (on Windows) because it was fast, worked directly with files and had excellent UI.  It fit my requirements perfectly until I started shooting raw.  I used to backup my Pictures folder manually and ACDSee did not litter my hard drive with small library files like some other software do.

All that changed once I got my DSLR.  I needed something to post process my raw images and I am not sure ACDSee even supported Nikon's raw format.  Also, about the same time, I switched from Windows to Mac so that played changed the requirements further.  I evaluated Nikon's Capture NX, Lightroom, Capture One etc and liked the raw conversion engine of Nikon's software but the UI sucked.  Also the ability to store your edits in Capture NX is nice and the no-library way of dealing with files worked really well for my workflow.  But I fell in love with the Lightroom UI and found the controls very intuitive.  Despite Lightroom's ease of use, I still stuck with NX for the longest time.  But gave in in the end when I noticed  the time I was spending dealing with NX's sucky UI.

So, here is what I do now.

I copy the shoot manually to a folder.  The folders are structured:

Year / YYYY-MM-DD, Keyword / Raw

So the Raw folder gets all the DSCNNNN.NEF files and its parent folder (eventually) gets the exported jpegs.  This lets me maintain my years worth of photos in the same structure starting with jpegs only in the pre-DSLR days.

I open this folder in Nikon ViewNX and apply the GPS location to the raw images.  Sometimes I use the iPhone GPS Logger application but mostly I know the location I shot the pictures at so I just do it manually in ViewNX.

I then import the Date+Keyword folder into Lightroom.  During import, I apply a profile I saved that sets the Adobe2010 Camera Portrait on the image.  In my experience, this profile gives me the closest rendering to the NX exported jpegs.  since I shoot in Portrait mode, NX applies the correct settings but those are lost in the default Adobe profile leaving me with a bland colorless image.  Applying this profile on import makes things equal.

I then go through the shoot in Lightroom hitting X key on photos that I want to delete.  There are times you take multiple shots to keep one but since "storage is cheap," most photographers end up keeping them all.  Not me!  I don't like clutter.

After this first pass, I choose to delete rejected photos from disk.

Then I do the post processing on all photos.  This used to be a labor intensive process but last few months I have been forcing myself to save time here by shooting better photos in camera.  This includes getting the exposure right and framing the subject better.  Getting the white balance right in camera is a little harder and its easier to fix in Lightroom since you can get one image right and then apply the change to your entire set easily.

Lightroom post processing is a whole different subject so I am going to leave that out of this (long) post.

When I am done, I select all photos and press Cmd+S to save my edits as XMP sidecar files.  This allows me to ditch my Lightroom library if needed since all the edits are now saved with the raw files (almost) like Capture NX.  Importing the raw files with their XMP files applies the edits.  However, it does not show history but that is a small price to pay.

After this I export the entire shoot to the Date+Keyword folder as jpeg files keeping the same name (in case I need to correlate the jpeg with its raw file later).  This export also puts a small copyright and logo on my jpegs.  I mention it here because it has become important for me to mark my photos this way.

At this point, I [used to] drag the jpegs to iPhoto and create a new event with Date+Keyword.  iPhoto gave me the ability to tag people using face recognition and to play very good slideshows.  But last few months, I have stopped doing that.  Since it takes time and the payoff is not that much.

I also have Picasa which lets me upload photos to Google and also some printing services.  But it is neglected (until needed) now just like iPhoto.

That's all for now.  More later.