March 19th, 2013Top Story How to Customize Your iPhone's Home Screen and Break Away from the Pack By Whitson Gordon The iPhone has a pretty beautiful home screen, but it looks the same as every other iPhone out there. If you want a phone that's truly yours, here's how to customize the look of your home screen from top to bottom. Every week, we share our favorite custom home screens from readers, and all the tweaks they use to make them more practical, productive, or just plain pretty. Unfortunately, most of our featured home screens are Android-based, and that just ain't right! So, we've compiled this guide to customizing every inch of your iPhone or iPad's home screen. Try out some of the tweaks and share your creations with us! Note that for all the tweaks below, you'll need to be jailbroken. There's no real way around it. While you can customize a few small things without jailbreaking, true customization can only happen with jailbroken apps, so jailbreak your phone if you haven't already (dont worry, it's easy), then continue with the instructions below. Theme the Lock Screen and Icons with Winterboard Winterboard manages themes for your lock screen, home screen icons, and all sorts of other small tweaks, making it a great starting point. Before you get started, we recommend poking around sites like MyColorScreen, ModMyi, MacThemes, and DeviantART to see what others have done with their home screens. If you see a lock screen or icon theme you like, find out which one it is, and install it with Winterboard using the following instructions: Open up Cydia and install Winterboard. Restart your phone when prompted. Download your theme of choice. If it's in Cydia, you may have to add a new repository to download it. If the author gives it to you in a .theme folder, install an iPhone Explorer like iFunBox and copy the .theme folder from your computer to /Library/Themes on your device. Open up the Winterboard app. Tap on "Select Themes" and check off the theme you just installed. Some may include multiple selections in Winterboard, and you can mix and match whichever ones you want (e.g. you can turn on the lock screen part of a theme, but leave off the icon theme that goes with it). Tap the Respring button, and when it's done you should see the lock screen theme in place. Note that many lock screen themes may require you to install other tweaks, like Lockscreen Clock Hide, in order for them to work properly. If that's the case, you'll see it in the description of the theme, and you can install those other tweaks as needed. Home screen by rshroff2 on MyColorScreen. The great thing about Winterboard themes is that they're pretty easy to customize, even if you don't have any coding experience. Everything you need is in that .theme folder (and if you got the theme on Cydia, you can find the .theme folder by installing an iPhone Explorer like iFunBox and navigating to /Library/Themes on your device). For example, if you don't like the wallpaper that came with your theme, open up the .theme folder, find the wallpaper, and replace it with your own. You can even replace the images for the lock screen slider, replace specific icons, or edit the LockBackground.html (if you're comfortable editing code). You can change fonts, change the size of text, and even move certain elements around. When you're done, drag that .theme folder back onto your device, re-select it in Winterboard, and check out your changes. The world is your oyster. Lastly, if you want a more intense overhaul of your lock screen and home screen, check out Dreamboard. It works similarly to Winterboard, but it's designed to completely change the look of your home screen in ways Winterboard cannot, and it isn't as open to customization and mixing and matching different themes. It's worth checking out, but if you want to build a new, custom home screen from the ground up, Dreamboard probably isn't the way to go. Lock screen by falcon212 on MacThemes. Tweak the Home Screen Layout with Springtomize and More So you've got yourself a fancy looking home screen and some custom icons, but now it's time to really dig into the small stuff. Maybe you want to fix a few annoyances, remove certain interface elements, or spice up your device with some new animations. For that, you need Springtomize ($3). Install it in Cydia, then open it up for options like the following: Choose from different home screen and lock screen animations Add more icons to the dock, give it a cover flow effect, and more Change the lock screen wallpaper when charging, hide the slider, change the slider's label, and more Hide icon labels, clear icon badges with two taps, resize icons, or hide apps that you don't like Add a close button to folders, disable the folder animation, put a dock in your folders, and more Remove pagination from the app switcher, make the app switcher work in landscape mode, enable a brightness slider in the app switcher, and more Change your carrier label in the status bar, add other information like RAM or IP address, and hide other status bar icons Change your device's font, font size, and font color Change the look of your device's dock and battery icon Lots, lots more If you're customizing your home screen, Springtomize is an absolute must-have. Home screen by eyeisdatsteve (MyColorScreen). You might also check out GridLock ($5), which frees your icons from Apple's constraints so you can place them anywhere you want on the grid. If you want four icons in the middle of the screen and nothing else, you can do that. You can have four along the left side, one in each corner, or any other layout you can think of, as long as it follows the regular home screen grid. If you want something a bit fancier than that, check out Iconoclasm ($3), which will let you arrange icons in whatever kind of grid (or lack thereof) you want. After you install Iconoclasm, head to your Settings app and tap on Iconoclasm to see the layouts available to you. Tap on one to try it out. You can also download other layouts from Cydia or make your own with the free Iconoclasm Layout Maker. With this app, you can put together any layout your heart desires. If you want to fit 30 icons on your home screen in the shape of a smiley face, you could (but we wouldn't recommend it). Home screen by kieranc88 on MyColorScreen. Change Your Font with BytaFont If you're tired of iOS' regular ol' font, you can change it with Springtomize. However, a free app in Cydia called Bytafont will give you more choices. Just download and install it, then open up the Bytafont app. You can browse new fonts directly from Bytafont, or open up Cydia and search through the hundreds of fonts available there. After installing a font, it should show up in Bytafont's settings. Just tap the one you want, and your device will respring with your new font in place across the entire system. You can also go to Bytafont's Advanced section if you just want to change the font in certain parts of the interface (like the lock screen clock or the keyboard). Home screen by Jan Amundsenat MyColorScreen. Add Widgets to Your Home Screen with Dashboard X If you want more than just a grid of icons on your home screen, Dashboard X ($1.99) is a great little tool that puts Notification Center widgets on your home screen. That means you can put things like the weather widget, NCSettings, a music widget, and more right under your icons for quick access. You can rearrange widgets, resize them, and more. Just download Dashboard X from Cydia along with the widgets you want, then head back to your home screen. Long-press on the screen to enter "jiggle mode," then long-press again to get a list of widgets available to you. Tap the one you want to add it. To remove widgets, just head to Settings > Dashboard X. Tap "Enabled Widgets" and you'll get a list of widgets available to you. You can tap the "Edit" button to remove them, as well as edit a few other advanced settings in this area. Home screen by 666 at MyColorScreen. Check Out Cydia for Other, Single-Purpose Tweaks These are the big, general apps that aim to customize your iPhone home screen, but you can find a lot of smaller, one-feature tweaks in Cydia too. For example, you can: Hide weather and calendar drawers under your lock screen with Peekly Get a Smaller Lock Screen Clock with SubtleLock Get different wallpapers on each page with Pages+ Overhaul the App Switcher with Auxo Endlessly scroll through apps on your home screen with Inifiniapps And lots, lots more The best way to find these tweaks is to keep an eye out on sites like MyColorScreen, our Featured Home Screen series, and just checking out all our posts about jailbreaking. The Cost of Customization So by now you're probably asking yourself: What is this going to do to my phone's smoothness and battery life? The answer is: it depends. Many of these tweaks very well may slow your phone down or decrease its battery life, but the cost is going to be different for everyone. Obviously, if you have newer hardware, you'll be able to perform more tweaks without as much loss. If you have older hardware, you may only be able to install a few tweaks without sacrifice. I myself had no problems on an iPhone 4 running a custom lock screen with Winterboard and a few other minor tweaks, but had I installed everything we talk about in this post, it probably would have had lots of problems. Conversely, the mere act of installing Winterboard on my first-gen iPad made it pretty much useless. So, you'll have to do some experimenting for yourself. Don't install everything at once, go one tweak at a time and see how much your phone is affected. It'll take you a bit longer, but then when your phone does get a lot slower, you'll know which tweak to blame, and you can uninstall it. In the end, it's all about how much battery life and speed you're comfortable with, and how much you want to customize your phone. Good luck! Photo by Nicemonkey (Shutterstock).

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March 19th, 2013Top Story Infographics: Where Do High School Basketball Stars Come From, And Where Do They Go? By Reuben Fischer-Baum Last month, the McDonald's All-American Game released its 2013 rosters. The game is a showcase of some of the best high school talent in the country, which this year largely came out of Texas (five players), California (four), Florida (three), and North Carolina (two). Of these 14 players, only five have committed to play at in-state colleges. We wondered: Is this typical of high school talent? Historically, where do high school stars generally come from, and where do they end up playing? To investigate, I looked at the hometowns and colleges of all 840 McDonald's All-Americans from 1977 to 2012, since the class of 2013 hasn't totally shaken itself out yet. Hometowns were largely based on high school, although if a player went to a religious, private, or boarding school (like basketball factory Oak Hill Academy), I checked to see which state he was actually raised in.* Likewise, I tried to I.D. players who transfered during college, and stick them with the programs they initially played for. Here are the states that have, adjusted for population, produced the most McDonald's All-Americans: Indiana, living up to its reputation, may have the strongest high school basketball tradition in the country. With 41 All-Americans in 36 years, Indiana has produced more talent than Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, all significantly larger states, and trails only Illinois, New York, and California. Adjusting for population size, the Hoosier State blows the field away. Maryland is also a hotbed of talent, as are a handful of Southern states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee), and neighboring Illinois. Alaska is clearly the oddball. When the McDonald's All-American team was inaugurated, in 1977, Alaska was the smallest state in the nation. Still, Alaska has produced three All-Americans, all of whom were subsequently drafted by NBA teams: Carlos Boozer, Mario Chalmers, and Trajan Langdon. Thirteen states have produced fewer All-Americans than Alaska, which goes to show that while basketball is good for inner cities (where courts are an efficient use of space) and rural areas (where schools may be too small to field football and baseball teams), it's also pretty great for places that are just too damn cold to really play anything outside for most of the school year. Unsurprisingly, none of those Alaskan stars stayed in-state for college hoops. But how about the others? Let's take a look at each state's "capture rate," i.e., the percentage of All-American players who stay in-state for college: Overall, 35 percent of McDonald's All-Americans went to school in-state. Utah has produced five All-Americans, all of them Mormon, with three attending BYU (Devin Durrant, Shawn Bradley, Garner Meads) and two attending the University of Utah (Britton Johnsen, Danny Vranes). My guess is that's not a small-sample anomaly, either; Mormon Utahns have little reason to leave the state for school. North Carolina (26 for 30), Kentucky (11 for 15), and Kansas (seven for nine) also come out on the higher end, which is understandable given the strength of the programs in those states. Arizona, Minnesota, and Arkansas's recruiters all deserve some respect for the job they've been able to do. While Washington D.C. was not included in the per capita talent calculation-D.C.'s per capita anything is pretty skewed when compared with the states' figures-it is worth noting that it does produce a lot of great players, and loses most of them. Combining these two variables, we can figure out the states that both produce and capture a lot of high school talent, still on a per capita basis: There aren't a lot of surprises here. UNC/Duke, Kentucky, Indiana, and Kansas are all in the running for the best college basketball program of all time (plus Louisville, Notre Dame, and NC State draw some pretty solid talent as well). The only other school that should really be in the conversation is UCLA, which won 10 of its 11 titles before the creation of the All-American game in 1977. Great programs, it turn out, can attract great local talent, and as a result, they have staying power. Utah, thanks to its perfect capture record, also scores high. Now let's look at the inverse of this map, the states that produce yet lose the most talent to out-of-state programs (on a per capita basis): Indiana produces so much talent for its size that it's almost guaranteed to lose a significant chunk of it. Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia, and Georgia are (were) home to the middling schools of the SEC and ACC: the seven major programs in those states have combined for one championship (Maryland, 2002) and only eight Final Four appearances. New Jersey, New York, Georgia, and Illinois are all home to major metropolitan areas that lack their own dominant programs. Major programs in any of these states are a threat to explode every year: All it takes is one great recruiter to make the right pitch. While the overall capture rate from 1977-2012 was 35 percent, only 29 percent of players on the 2012 squads stuck to their home states. Is college basketball recruitment slowly becoming more fluid? Here's a chart showing the three-year average of the percent of players who stay in-state (the red line), from 1977 to 2012. The blue line shows the three-year average of the percent of players who stayed in-region, as defined by the U.S Census. Players have become more likely to venture out of state and out of region, but not by as big of a margin as you'd expect. The large dip corresponds to the years 2001-2005, when 24 All-Americans (20 percent of the total) jumped straight to the NBA. With the one-and-done rule, the capture rate has rebounded, and now roughly 30 percent of players stay in-state (compared with 45 percent in the '70s), and 50 percent stay in-region (compared with 60 percent in the '70s). This smaller decline is partially due to the rise of international players coming to the U.S. for high school hoops. From 1977-1999, nine All-Americans grew up overseas, or about 3.9 per decade. From 2000-2012 this rate has more than doubled to 9.2 per decade. These players all stick around the U.S. for college, and none of them can be considered "in-staters." In the next decade, we may start to see a real shift in some of these trends. The number of international players will likely continue to rise. Historically, Texas has produced a small number of All-Americans given its size, but its five entrants in 2013 could be a sign of things to come. The four remaining uncommitted players could drive the capture rate for this year as high as 48 percent, the same as it was back in the '70s. One thing's for certain, though: The schools that have great college basketball have been great for many, many years. While the high-school landscape may shift ever so gradually from here on out, we can still depend on the same state powerhouses for some time. * This group included a significant number of players: I checked roughly 300, and in some cases I had to make a subjective call about what it meant to "grow up" somewhere. One example: Carmelo Anthony lived in New York until he was 8 years old, but he primarily played ball in Baltimore and has an Orioles tattoo, so I gave him to Maryland. If you think I messed up somewhere and denied your state its rightful All-American, you can check my list here and leave a note in the comments.

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March 19th, 2013Top Story Convicted School Shooter to Victims' Families: 'The Hand That Killed Your Sons Masturbates to the Memory' By Cord Jefferson [Image via AP]

Convicted School Shooter to Victims' Families: 'The Hand That Killed Your Sons Masturbates to the Memory' Who Is Guccifer, the Hacker Who's Terrorizing Politicos? Now It's Clear That Michael Jackson Was Not the Biological Father of At Least One of His Children Unemployment Stories, Vol. 31: 'I Look at Me and I See Someone Who Has Already Peaked' Selena Gomez Is Going to Need a Few Extra Bodyguards After This Serious Justin Bieber Burn on Last Night's Letterman The House Across From Westboro Baptist Is Getting a Rainbow Pride Paint Job Right Now Joe Drops By New Pope's Inaugural Mass More Stories on Gawker »

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