Bored with how your iPhone looks? If you have it jailbroken, you can install iPhone themes and make the device look a lot different than iOS by using an app called Dreamboard.

If you haven’t jailbroken yet, backup the iPhone and then proceed with Absinthe for iPhone 4S on iOS 5.0.1 or Redsn0w for iOS 5.0.1 on other iPhones and iPods. Dreamboard is then found as a free download in Cydia, so search for it and install.

Many Dreamboard themes are available via Cydia, here’s a handful:

• Endroid - Android HTC lookalike with updating weather widget and clock, this is the default Android theme
• OS7 – Makes iPhone look like Windows Phone 7, complete with tile animations
• WebOS – If you want your iPhone to look like a now extinct Palm device
• Kindle Fire for iPhone – Gives the iPhone an interface like the Kindle Fire
• OS X Lion Ultimatum – one of the fancier themes, makes iOS look like Mac OS X Lion
• Apple Desk – looks like an actual desk, complete with iMac and keyboard

There are plenty more, and while a lot of the themes are free, others cost a buck of two. Some paid themes have to be downloaded manually and then moved to the iPhone with SSH and SFTP from a Mac or PC, others can be installed directly on the phone.

Heads up to Lifehacker for the basic theme ideas, but if you’re serious about theming the iPhone don’t miss iDownloadBlogs theme page for tons of videos on the process.

It’s pretty hard to get excited about a USB cable, but the Dexim Visible Smart chargers are ridiculously cool in a super geeky way.

You need to watch the video below to see the effect, but basically the cable glows while it is charging or syncing to “visibly show the electrical current flowing through the cable.” The lights actually change speed based on the battery capacity of the iPhone, iPod, or iPad, with the animated lights moving quicker the lower the battery charge is, and finally stopping motion once the battery is charged.

You can buy the glowing Dexim charger on Amazon for about $30.

Coolest USB cable ever? Yea, I think so. Heads up to Gizmodo for the find.

Action Movie FX is a really fun free app that adds high quality special effects to videos, and it’s all done on the iPhone in a surprisingly easy package. Created by Hollywood studio Bad Robot Productions (makers of movies like Cloverfield, Star Trek, Super 8, and the latest Mission Impossible), the app came out a little while ago but has been updated to include another free special effect, demolition ball, alongside a missile launcher and a car falling from the sky. These aren’t poor quality effects either, they’re impressively made as you can see in the videos posted below. Other special effects, like tornadoes, helicopter crashes, air strikes, and gun fire, can be bought as in-app purchases for an extra $0.99 to add more fun into the mix.

Download Action Movie FX for free from the App Store

The app is compatible with iPhone 3GS and onward, but realistically it’s best coupled with the iPhone 4, Phone 4S, iPod touch 4G, and iPad 2, because of the higher resolution cameras and faster processors. You’ll also need iOS 4.3 or later but you should be on iOS 5.0.1 by now.

Here are a three short sample videos from YouTube showing off the free special effects:

Missile Launcher:

Demolition Ball:
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iPhone is truly the device that changed everything, it reinvented the phone and what we expect of a handheld device, it forever changed Apple, and it has since defined the entire mobile industry.

All of that started 5 years ago today, on January 9, when Steve Jobs took the stage at MacWorld 2007 to unveil the very first iPhone, saying “I have been looking forward to this for two and a half years. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” and the rest, as they say, is history.

For a quick recap, the original iPhone had an aluminum back, glass multitouch screen, included a 2mp camera, ran at 412MHz, had 128MB of RAM, and was available in 4GB and 8GB, with a 16 GB options appearing later as the 4GB became discontinued. The devices main setback was the limitation to AT&T’s slow EDGE network, but regardless it was by far the most impressive and advanced phone on the market and sold out quickly, leaving smartphone competitors scrambling. iOS at the time was fairly basic and called iPhone OS, made from a heavily stripped down version of Mac OS X. Apps were limited to what Apple installed on the iPhone, which were things like Safari, iPod, Mail, Calendar, Photos, Stocks, Weather, Calculator, etc, and third party apps with the developer SDK didn’t come until a year later in early 2008.

Below are videos of Steve Jobs unveiling the very first iPhone, if you haven’t seen these and you are interested in Apple history, they are well worth watching:
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Recently we posted a Mac museum collection that featured an iMac using wallpaper that made it appear like you could see right through to the logic board. It turns out these images are from iFixIt, the company that likes to tear down Apple hardware.

In the process of documenting their teardowns, iFixIt also has taken high resolution images that work great for wallpapers, giving the illusion that there is no screen on the device, and instead making it look as if icons and windows are floating directly atop circuitry. It’s a cool effect, and they have a variety of freely available native resolution wallpapers in this style for the iMac, iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and even the Apple external Thunderbolt display.

• Find them all on iFixit.com’s blog or check out some more images below

If you don’t care about showing the exact hardware for your device, they all make great wallpapers in general. My favorites have to be the iPad and iMac, although the Thunderbolt chip is nice too:

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The picture you’re looking at is of an iPad 2 floating high enough into space to see the curvature of the Earth, far above the Nevada desert. Guess what is going to happen next?
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Yup you read that title correctly. This is kind of stupid and might be fake, but it’s entertaining anyway. MacGasm found the above video of a kid pestering maybe his brother, who finally has enough and slaps him silly using the iPad itself. Or maybe they’re testing out FaceTime?

This is a classic picture of a young Steve Jobs giving the finger to an IBM sign in 1983, it’s been circulating again after all these years thanks to Macintosh co-creator Andy Hertzfeld who posted the high res copy to Google+. Here’s the text that was posted along with the amusing image:

In memoriam for Steve Jobs as 2011 draws to a close, here’s one more rare photo that illustrates his rebellious spirit. In December 1983, a few weeks before the Mac launch, we made a quick trip to New York City to meet with Newsweek, who was considering doing a cover story on the Mac. The photo was taken spontaneously as we walked around Manhattan by Jean Pigozzi, a wild French jet setter who was hanging out with us at the time. Somehow I ended up with a copy of it. My editor begged me to include it in my book, but I was too timid to ask for permission, especially since IBM was still making CPUs for Apple at the time.

The book is his “Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made“, which tells the story of how the original Macintosh was created. That subject was briefly discussed in the recent Steve Jobs biography as well.

The picture demonstrates the competitive nature of Jobs and early Apple, and although the image has been around a while this is the first higher resolution copy to surface. In the early days of Apple, IBM was largely considered the companies biggest competitor and enemy of sorts, as is demonstrated in the Ghostbusters spoof and of course the classic 1984 Superbowl commercial that launched the first Mac.

In 1984, Apple spoofed the classic Ghostbusters song by Ray Parker Jr, and this outrageously cheesy video is the result.

The video apparently played as the introduction to an Apple corporate event held in Hawaii to rally the international sales team. Instead of Ghostbusters, it’s “Blue Busters”, with Blue of course being a reference to Big Blue, or IBM. John Sculley and Steve Wozniak even make appearances in the video, and supposedly Steve Jobs is somewhere in there too as a Ghostbuster along with a few other Apple execs, although I couldn’t identify who was who.

Hilarious find by TheNextWeb, who also found a few more details from a YouTube commenter that happened to be at the event:

I was there in Oct. 1984. This was not an internal ad. I was a 1984 state of the art multimedia slide show with audio by Ray Parker Jr. who sang the original. There were also live dancers on the stage.

This was the opening presentation of the International Sales Meeting that introduced the Lightwriter later renamed Laserwriter.

Apple always used a current movie as a them for the sales meetings. in 1985 it was Back to the Future.

So, anyone found that 1985 video yet?

Apple history at it’s finest, or funniest at least.

Want to track Santa’s progress as he delivers presents around the world? You can follow Santa Claus on his Christmas eve deliveries around the globe right on an iPhone or iPad:

• Launch the “Maps” app and search for ‘Santa’

That’s it! Santa’s current location will be shown on the world map. He moves around quick though so refresh or search again to see where he has gone to deliver gifts to next.

There’s also an official NORAD tracking app with a goofy game, but the actual tracking is still done within the Maps application.

As you might have guessed, you can also use the standard browser-based Google Maps to search for and track Santa’s location on your Mac or PC.

Merry Christmas!