First, copy your screensaver (in PNG format with a size of 600x800px) to your Kindle as “screensaver.png”. Now what we need to do is to jailbreak your KT. Yifan Lu was gracious enough to provide us with a jailbreak a couple of days ago. I won’t dive too far into it, but he provides a MP3 whose description in the metadata is a simple shell script. Yes, when the Kindle plays an MP3, it executes any shell script in the metadata. Not only does it execute the script, it does it at root. Huge security risk? Most likely.

1. So to jailbreak, first visit Yifan’s KT jailbreak page and download the jailbreak AND the “Simple usbnet update”. Once you have both downloaded extract the “jailbreak.mp3″ file from the jailbreak zip to your Kindle’s “music” folder via USB. Also extract the installer .bin file to the root folder of the Kindle and rename it “update.bin”.

2. Disconnect your KT and then go to Menu->Experimental->MP3 Player and then hit the big “Press to Jailbreak!” button. You device will start the jailbreaking process.

3. Once the jailbreaking process is done, go to Menu->Settings->Menu->Update Your Kindle. Your device will apply the homebrew update that will install SSH.

4. The update also installed a package called “usbnet”. I was not sure how to use it, so I did not mention it in this post. If you know how to use it, let me know in the comments. EDIT:elbunuelo explains how to use usbnet

5. Now you’ll want to find the IP address of your Kindle. I did this by looking at the DHCP client table in my router and matching the Kindle’s MAC address (found in Menu->Settings->Menu->Device Info) to its IP.

6. Before we start the SSH server you will need to set a root password. This can be done by returning to the main menu, then tap on the search bar, type “;un password PASSWORD” where PASSWORD is what you want your password to be. NOTE: Please make this a secure password. I know the Kindle runs everything as root through metadata, but it’s still a good idea to give it a secure password.

7. Now we can start the SSH server. Hit the search bar again, but this time type “;un”. The SSH server is now started and we can get to disabling those pesky ads.

8. Open up your favorite SSH client and connect to your Kindle’s IP address with the username “root” and whatever password you set up before.

9. Type “mntroot rw” so we can get some write access. Then type the following lines:

rm -f -R /mnt/us/system/.assets/*
chmod -W /mnt/us/system/assets/
mkdir /mnt/base-us/ad_backup
cp -f /usr/share/blanket/ad_screensaver/* /mnt/base-us/backup/
rm -f /usr/share/blanket/ad_screensaver/screen*.png
cp -f /mnt/base-us/screensaver.png /usr/share/blanket/ad_screensaver/screensaver-unregistered.png
cp -f /mnt/base-us/screensaver.png /usr/share/blanket/ad_screensaver/screensvr.png
rm -f /usr/share/blanket/ad_screensaver/banner*.gif

And that’s it! Your ad-supported Kindle is now free of corporate interference! Now go and support Amazon a little for making such an awesome device by buying some books.
No, but really, this is purely for demonstration of how Amazon failed to prevent something so simple.

EDIT 12/21/2011
So I fixed the MP3 installer. Well, I completely rewrote it. It turns out that I was really being an idiot and packaged it up completely wrong, for which I apologize. Here is a link to the new version, which also has a built-in uninstaller. Also, this time to replace the screensaver, you only have to drop in one file (I dropped in a sample for you to use). If you have problems, hit me up in the comments.

The biggest changes are the ones you probably won’t see. I’m most likely going to rebuild my theme from the ground up to solve some styling quirks and hacks that I’ve used on my site. Honestly, this thing is so hacked together, I’m surprised how good the compatibility is across browsers. I also have a lot of time on my hands in the foreseeable future, so I’ll most likely have some fun and exciting projects to announce!

Graphics: 8/10

Sound: 9/10

Gameplay: 7/10

1. TotalFinder

This isn’t really an application, but more of a Finder extension. TotalFinder adds everything that every operating system file manager should have, tabs. Instead of opening a new window every time you want to browse somewhere else, you can just open a new tab. If you want to transfer files or compare two folders, you can also put the tabs side by side, much like you would see in a FTP application. Okay, I know file managers like Nautilus already have tabs, but TotalFinder takes the cake with its Chrome-like tab integration. Speaking of which…

2. Google Chrome

This, in my complete honest opinion, may very well be my favorite and most important application. Not just because it’s a web browser, it is THE web browser. Google really outdid itself with Chrome. A few features that I’d like to highlight are as follows: smart tabs, minimalistic interface, extensions and support for Greasemonkey scripts, combined address and search bar, integrated Flash that just so happens to be sandboxed, a lightning fast Javascript engine, and most importantly, it’s built on Webkit.

3. Skype

Now, Skype is my only chat application that I run right now. I don’t think I have to explain why I like this application so much, I think everyone knows what Skype is now.

4. Twitter

The official Twitter app for Mac is possibly the best experience I’ve ever had with a social network. First of all, it’s free, even though it doesn’t seem like it should be. The UI is beautifully crafted with a minimalistic design, fluid animations, and just overall great functionality. I used to run Tweetie, but since then Twitter has teamed up with Atebits to release this beauty. Some key features: live Twitter feeds (no refreshing!), global hotkeys, built in image sharing, and the ability to add multiple Twitter accounts.

5. ComicBookLover

Recently I’ve started to get into comic books, but I found physical copies to be too expensive and, well, physical. I didn’t want to start filling up shelf after shelf with comic books, so I decided to go digital. I tried a few apps, but ComicBookLover is no doubt the best I could find. One really neat feature I like is it’s ability to sense what position your MacBook is being held at while in fullscreen mode by the use of the sudden motion sensor. This lets me go fullscreen and then rotate my laptop as if it were a book. It’s basically iTunes for comic books.

6. iTunes

It’s iTunes. I have yet to find a better music library application on ANY platform. I guess I really just enjoy the interface since it still lacks some support for certain codecs (I’m looking at you FLAC) and it’s gained some weight in the resource-intensive department, but I still love it. Even if it does have a stupid icon.

7. Coda

Without Coda I doubt this site would even exist. It is the one web development tool that I think everyone should use. It’s very basic, but that’s the beauty of it. It’s the core that is so great about it. Its blazing fast FTP client and ability to edit a site live make it one of the very few tools in my web development arsenal.

8. System Preferences

I tweak my computer A LOT. So much in fact that my productivity would probably drop 50% if I had to make two clicks (Apple->System Preferences) instead of one to get to System Preferences. Alright, that’s a lie, but in my personal experience it’s always been easier and faster to just keep it in my dock.

When I noticed this I decided to leave the site how it was and make little tweaks and addons along the way. First, all I had was the basic structure of the page, but it just wasn’t personal enough. I mean, this is my personal site so the first thing I wanted you to see when you visit it was something about me. As I thought about it more and more, I learned that no matter who it is that is visiting my site, whether it be family, friends, or strangers, I wanted the user to feel as if they didn’t know me. That’s when I decided to add a sort of static-dynamic front page. It began with adding a little snippet about myself, showing a picture of me, and then listing my latest three blog posts. Seeing as how I don’t update my blog too often, I chopped it down to just my latest blog post. The page felt a little empty, so I added a social feed (an idea that I got from Josh Betz so visitors could have more of an up-to-date status of what’s going on in my life. From there i changed the picture on the home page to be a custom-coded slideshow of my Flickr photostream, and I made my site more friendly to all major web browsers.

Anyway, enough about my old theme, what about my new one? Well, at first I wanted to do a theme based off some cool typography tricks that you can do with CSS3, but it was too limiting for my taste. Since this is a site about me, and I get my inspiration for other projects from my environment, I thought why not design a theme around my room? I can’t really describe what my room looks like, but I found the colors and textures to be very… web friendly. I’ve been playing around with some drawings in Photoshop and in my head and so far I’m really liking what I’m seeing. I don’t have a proof of concept yet, but I suspect that I’ll be releasing some early mockups and such through Facebook and Twitter just to get some initial feedback.

When I did the current nature theme, I was coding the site live, so from December 2009 or so all the way to mid November 2010, the site was largely broken and always-changing. I guess it was interesting if you visited my site a lot, but I guess it’s pretty unprofessional, so this time around I will get the new theme around to 90% of my liking and then I’ll push it live. I’m also going to try to clone my site onto a local server running in my house so that I can run regular backups and so I won’t have to deal with these atrocious 50kbps upload speeds.

So yeah, stick around, the next couple months are sure going to be exciting!