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:

Car falling from sky:

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:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

And of course, here is the original iPhone commercial:

Hard to believe it’s been five years already, huh? Where will we be in another 5 years?

Happy Birthday iPhone!

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:

The iPhone is a little crowded with icons on top but still looks good.

The external Apple Thunderbolt Display’s internal wallpaper focuses on the chips instead.

Direct links to iFixIt’s wallpaper: Thunderbolt, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iMac 21″, iMac 27″.

Thanks to Rejean for pointing these out in the comments!

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?

Using a weather balloon, G-Form sent an iPad 2 enclosed in their new Extreme Edge case over 100,000′ into the stratosphere. Attached to the iPad was a GoPro camera to film the entire thing, from ascent including the bursting of it’s carrier ballon and the resulting harsh landing in the middle of rocky nowhere. Amazingly enough, the iPad still works just fine after crash landing to Earth. I think it’s fair to say that G-Form cases win the toughness award, not bad for $45.

Watch the video below:

G-Form always comes up with some creative ways to market their ultra-protective cases, first they tossed an iPad out of a plane, but now they’ve really outdone themselves. Even if you don’t have any plans to buy an impact protective case for your gear, these videos are fun to watch.

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!

Shorelines is a beautiful free app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch that generates winter scenes complete with falling snow, trees, and rolling fog. The trees are randomly generated, the snow gradually accumulates on the branches, and you can tilt the iPad or iPhone to affect the gravity and direction of the snow fall. Shaking the iOS device will even shake the snow off the trees branches.

• Download Shorelines free from the iOS App Store

Just don’t let the name fool you, there aren’t any sea shores or ocean scenes, Shorelines is all winter and snow. The eye-candy centric app is basically an interactive screensaver and doesn’t have many features, nor should it. Tap the circular arrow in the lower right corner to regenerate a scene, or the camera in the bottom left corner to save the image to your iOS Photo Album where it can be used as wallpaper or sent around.

A perfect addition to any idle iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch this holiday season.

If you have a spare Mac or PC sitting around, don’t forget to grab the retro fireplace app too.

Just in time for the holidays, Fireplace is a totally awesome interactive 8-bit fireplace app that fills your Macs screen with a pixelated fireplace. But don’t stop there, you can add logs, roast hotdogs and marshmallows, and even burn papers and photos. Each log ‘burns’ for about 30 minutes of pixel torching glory, and although it won’t heat up the room, it’s another great retro addition to your Mac app list.

• Download Fireplace for free here (Mac OS X & Windows)

The basic commands are: log, match, paper, marshmallow, smore, hotdog, eat, blow, water. You can lower and raise the hotdogs and smores to roast them using the arrow keys, and they actually char and turn black if you keep them too close to the fire. Typing ‘water’ or hitting the Escape key will quit the app.

There’s a Windows version available too, so if you have an ancient 486 laying around you can finally put it to use and toast some pixels.

Cool find by CultofMac

Apple has started to air a new Christmas themed TV ad for the iPhone 4S and Siri featuring none other than Santa Claus. The commercial is the most entertaining iPhone 4S ad yet and features Santa asking Siri for directions, what kind of weather to expect at various locations around the country, requesting an email from Mrs Claus, and finally asking about his schedule, which Siri responds is filled with 3.7 billion appointments.

The ad has the same background music as past iPhone 4S commercials, which actually sounds a bit like Christmas music at this point. It’s also worth pointing out that the ad doesn’t even mention either the iPhone 4S or Siri by name, it just shows an Apple logo at the end.

You can watch the video below, or just wait for it to show on TV.

The recently aired BBC documentary Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy may have a dumb name, but the show itself is worth a watch for anyone interested in the subject matter. About an hour long, it features classic footage of Steve Jobs, in addition to interviews with a variety of Apple execs and industry leaders, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Andy Hertzfeld, Tim Berners-Lee, Avie Tevanian, and many more names that will be familiar if you follow Apple history or have read the Steve Jobs biography.

The video looks to have been posted to YouTube unofficially, so watch it while you can.

Nobody wants their gifts to arrive after the holidays have passed, and to alleviate that potential Apple has posted a list of holiday shipping times and deadlines. In order to get Apple items shipped free to your door by Christmas Eve (December 24), you’ll need to stop procrastinating:

• iPad: December 19th
• iPod: December 19th
• iPhone 4S: Passed, Dec 5th – visit an Apple Store!
• iPhone 4 and 3GS: December 19th
• Mac, customized: December 14th
• Mac, stock: December 19th
• Mac, popular configuration: December 19th
• Apple TV: December 19th

If you don’t mind paying for next-day shipping, the deadlines move up to December 21st.

For many Apple items, you can also try third party retailers like Amazon or Best Buy, and you can always visit a physical Apple Store if you’re down to the wire or really want to get someone the extremely popular iPhone 4S.

Helpful find by Macgasm for those of us who haven’t even started shopping for gifts yet.