This mod gets a 10 for effectiveness, but a 0 for looks.  Seriously though, I've worked as IT Support enough to know that some people's computers are actually caves full of dust bunnies.  When I would walk into someone's home or office I could tell instantly what shape their dust bunny colony would be in.  But dust is more than just an allergen, it's also horrible for scanning film.  Photographer Tommy Huynh recognized this issue and came up with an interesting mod to take care of the dust issue.  Now, if we can only get him some skills with a Dremel we might get an interesting mod.

Read on for more ghastly pictures.

MacMod user bobwil5on recently posted an interesting find for Apple's Front Row.  He had gone through and changed most of his Front Row, but wanted to go a step further.  He dug around for a day or so and found all of the back-end to Front Row, and it appears Apple has a sense of humor.  All of the back-end files to Front Row are stored in the Back Row framework.  If you want to go through and mod out your Front Row, fire up Photoshop (or whatever) and head to

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework/Versions/A/Resources

Make sure you do a backup of the files before hand.  If you mess something up I've got a ls -al of the directory for you to reference after the jump.

Thanks Bob!

Microsoft has a new 'green' push, but it isn't the same green that most people think of.  Green has usually meant money, and recently it has been the catch phrase for the environmental movement.  So I was kinda excited when I saw a Microsoft banner the other day with the website 'getgreenstaygreen.com' on it.  I thought, "Hey, maybe Microsoft is encouraging people to be more environmentally aware.  Maybe they aren't so bad after all."  Boy was I wrong.  Read on to find out what is behind Microsoft's latest "green" push.

So is it me, or are more and more people using wood as the base of their mods.  It has been common around steampunkers for a while, but now more and more people are finding the beauty of a nice piece of wood to base their mods around.

Take for example Australlian Flickr user Jozaeh.  He got a new iPod Mini recently and couldn't part with his old one, so he did what he has always wanted to do, make a wooden case for it.  The end result is a beautiful mod made out of Australian Red Cedar, Camphor Laure and Brass.  Read on for some highlights from his Flickr album.

With 2009 not even half way over, Lifehacker has decided to get in the first shots at the "best of list" for 2009.  While it is a bit early, their "Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Mac Downloads" does have a good list of standard free apps that you should have.  Included in their recommendation is some standard freebies: FireFox, Quicksilver, Transmission and Adium.  But they also go a bit further and suggest Postbox for mail (over Thunderbird), Unarchiver (for handling more file types), AppTrap (for application removal), and Burn (for easy disc burning).

There are a handful more of other freebies in their list.  A full list (and link) is after the jump.

In either an effort to build an eco-friendly mod or out of pure craziness, someone has decided to mod a log.  Or as I dubbed it, the Logputer.  There aren't many details in this, but we can speculate about the conversation that went on ...

"You know that tree that fell down over the Camaro?"
"You mean the one in the back yard?"
"No, the one in the front."
"Oh, yea.  What about it."
"I think I'm gonna make me a 'puter out of it."

Or something like that.  Either way, it is pretty nicely done considering the case is all one big piece of wood.  Check out some pictures after the jump or read more at techeblog.

From techeblog via Fark.

With iPhone's 3 GM Operating System  hitting all of the news sites, I figured we should chime in on some of it as well.  It appears as if you can tether the iPhone without jailbreaking it, regardless of whether AT&T is ready for it or not (AT&T says it will be ready later this year).  Over at 9 to 5 Mac they have the instructions to tether your iPhone now.  The only downside is that you won't be able to upgrade your iTunes or iPhone after the hack.  But once AT&T comes out and gets the tethering going, you should be able to update and tether again.

A brief "how to" after the jump, or check it out at 9to5Mac.  iPhone Atlas also has a similar process.

Okay, maybe not bullet proof, but it got your attention.  Seriously though, the crew over at Knight Creations has released their latest service, a Kevlar replacement case for your iPhone or iPod.  The Kevlar case holds an advantage over metallic or plastic covers in that Kevlar is an organic material, so it doesn't lose RF signal strength.  And, because it is an actual case replacement, you don't add any extra size to the iPod.  Your iPod will still fit in all of your 3rd party accessories.  Also, you don't have to take your iPhone or iPod out of a cover to use it.

While the Kevlar cover sounds cool, there's more.  Using some science I might never understand, they are able to coat the bezel of the device with a layer of Titanium Aluminum Nitride (TiAlN) and make your iPod super strong and super resilient (like the iPhone Custom Mod).  Also, all iPhone Custom 3G's will get a new Lithium-Ion polymer battery.

If you still have a 2nd generation iPod, you're not out the party either.  Knight Creations has developed a stainless steel one piece cover for you, and have applied the same TiAlN treatment to make it just resilient.  However, the 2G iPhone has sold out and will not be restocked.

While the 3G mod isn't available for sale yet (website says 'In Your Dreams'), the 2nd Generation iPod goes for $99.  Check it out at gigapascal.com

Talk about having more processor power than you know what to do with!  The labs over at DRMFLD have put an iPhone/iPod Operating System on a Mac Pro, with multi-touch rotating screen and all.  No mod-guide yet, but this is a fun one to watch.

The Operator goes through some basic iPod/iPhone functions like looking at pictures, zooming, panning, rotating the screen, search the web and typing.  It looks like if the iPod can do it, this can also.  Video after the jump.

Here's a simple little mod for those that want to check multiple site when they start up their web browser.  As we all should know, you can set your default home page for when you open a new window in Firefox by specifying it in the Main tab of the Firefox preferences.  But what you might not know is that you can open up multiple home pages by default.  By adding a pipe between the addresses you can open up as many tabs as you want when you create a new window.

This is for Firefox only, sorry Safari.  The biggest downside to this is that it creates all of the tabs every time you open a new window.  So if you just want to pop open a new window, you have to have all of the tabs load up as well.  However, as a partial work around you can make a bookmark to open a new blank tab by having "javascript:window.open()" as the target for the bookmark.

Via Sava's Place