I’ve been having to do so many downer entries on iPhones, given my horrible track record, that I thought I’d do a post that’s all about how cool they are. My fourth iPhone, which has NEVER come into contact with my evil G5, has worked flawlessly from the git-go. So yesterday I explored the wonderful world of iPhone hacks. I was officially bored with the lack of intriguing and/or customizable ringtones, and have been reading the postings on sites like iPhone Alley and iPhone Atlas, both really good sites that help me keep up-to-date with what’s new with iPhones and iPhone accessories, and also look at the latest hacks. Now having spent $599 on my iPhone, I don’t want to do anything that will kill it. So after some consideration, I decided to install just two things on my iPhone: iFuntastic and installer.app. iFuntastic gives you a nice GUI to customize ringtones (any song in your iTunes library can be your ringtone), background pics, widget layouts, and also install applications like installer.app. installer.app is, you guessed it, an application installer. And it comes with a suite of ready-to-go applications like SwapTunes (which allows you to sync symbols for facebook” title=”music symbols for facebook”>music, etc from more than one computer – a no-no on a standard out-of-the-box iPhone), an IM app (I prefer using Meebo’s web version which customizes its screen for iPhones), and an RSS reader. All of these apps are pretty beta and need work but I’m liking the direction they’re going – and the direction they seem to be pushing Apple. The happy result of all my hacking efforts is that I now have “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners as my ringtone. Yay!

The best news about all of this is that you don’t need to be a geeky programmer to install any of this stuff. Just follow the instructions and you’re good to go.