Nook Touch has a hidden browser Easter Egg but gets rooted for good measure

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1lUgnAP38Q&w=670&h=400]

For those who may be into a $130 eInk B&W web browser, the newly released Nook Touch has an Easter Egg of a way to allow you to access the internal browser.  To activate it, enter a URL of the form mail.google.com into the Search function.

The Nook is an Android device after all and its Webkit browser should be able to work great for reading (pictures and movies less so). The-ebook-reader notes that not everything is fully baked with the browser:

Scrolling, zooming, and activating hyperlinks are hit-or-miss, and pages don’t load half the time. I tried downloading an EPUB from Feedbooks, the download worked, but the ebook would not open.

On the positive side, the menu system seems to work well. You can move between different windows, find on page, add bookmarks, adjust the settings—landscape mode even works.

Not to worry however, the Nook Touch also got its first Jailbreak this week as well. With the rooting, we’re likely to see numerous improvements to the web browser and also important functions like an email client and maps.

Nookdevs posts the whole process which requires:

• You need a 128 MB or higher microSD card that you are willing to completely erase. ( Note: It’s recommended you use a Class 6 microSD card as a lower grade card may have issues. )
• You need access to a computer.
  • the computer must be able to read and write a microSD card
  • the computer must have a working USB port to talk to the nook.
• You need a working wifi connection for the Nook Touch
• You must have a program to write disk images, either dd (Linux or Mac) or Win32DiskImager (Windows) software (details below).

The instructions are here.