Two brilliant guys have hacked the Kindle and Kindle 2.

The Kindle was first hacked a long, long time ago (December 2007) by Igor. He managed to use the Linux sources that Amazon is required to publish in order to figure out how things are setup in the firmware. Then he built a faux JTAG interface and was able to communicate to the device over a serial port. Lastly, he was able to login to the Kindle, revealing more about processes, ports, and other implementation details. This paved the way for the Kindle 2 hacks.

Recently, Jesse Vincent wrote on his blog about his efforts to hack the Kindle 2. He has discovered and written about the following:

• An ePub to Unsecured Mobi converter.
• Tether the Kindle 2 over USB to use your network’s Internet connection (this might be great for foreign folks, people on business trips, or spotty Whispernet coverage).
• Custom firmware updates can be applied to the Kindle 2.

This is certainly exciting stuff! This will likely prompt Amazon to try to quickly respond, but the ability to add additional functionality to the device is certainly possible. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t looking for a convergence device, so we’d prefer to see an ability to extend features in the Kindle UI, but that will prove to be difficult unless Amazon opens up an SDK.

If you had the opportunity to add new features to the Kindle 2, what would they be?