here's a great find that i found the other day when i decided that my new 4 hour old nano looked.....Bland.

its called ipodwizard. - heres a link - http://www.ipodwizard.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.

Sad thing is its for windows only unless someone would like to port it. not sure if it runs in wine or not haven tried.

theres also a mac version its called alterpod - http://mac.softpedia.com/get/iPod-Tools/alterPod.shtml - its not as easy as ipodwizard but it does the job.

A much better alternative, IMO, is iPod Linux. Though it may not offer as much customizability (is that a word?) as iPod wizard, it does offer you waaaay more, in terms of extra's and whatnot. Besides being able to easily change the appearance, colour, and font, you also have access to a ton of apps (ranging from text editors, to gameboy emulators, and even a video player for most generations), including additional games and the handy file browser.

(I sound like a damn advertisement! Batteries not included?) iPodLinux

that is true but i dont have to give up about 100mb of space to do it with iPW.

True as well.

Still, I don't mind the compromise. It's really so easy to take on and off, that If I ever need those extra couple albums back on, I'll just uninstall it. There's also a couple interesting things going on with video compression at the moment...I've seen a couple ideas in the forums that actually seem be viable. Then, at least we won't need at least 2gb's of space for an hour of video.

I like the way the iPod is, but it is good to get some variation here and there. iPods would sell so much better if they could be easily editted with like... iPod program created from apple.

Have anyone tried Rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org/) ? I wanted to try, but my ipod pretty old for this thing ((

rockbox it cool but not as goot as iPodLinux. rockbox has a gui that rivals the first winamp.

I tried iPodWizard on my 2Gen iPod Mini and the result was: total destruction. I don't know what I did wrong, what the program did wrog nor what my iPod did wrong but I had to reformat it and restore the software. And I'm still experiencing trouble: since I tried messing with it, my battery life droped from 10 hours to 4 hours. If you like your iPod, don't use that EVIL program.

I agree with DiaboliK - rockbox is extremly ugly! It's horrible.

iPod Linux - I tried, but I didn't like it.

So the conclusion is: DON'T MESS WITH YOUR IPOD - IT'S PERFECT THE WAY IT IS!

you can mess ywith your ipod as much as you want, if you read the instuctions, ipw will never mess up your ipod.
IPL is great for extra features
IPW is great of customizing the orignial firmware. and some of the themes are amazing.
IPW CANNOT mess up your ipod unless you edit strings