For those uninitiated into the world of Android rooting and custom ROM builds, Cyanogen is one of the pioneers (one of the few still active as well) in the world of custom Android ROM building.
He has quite a following of users, so much so that Google at one point sent him a Cease and Desist order for inadvertently breaking copyright on the Google Apps suite of tools (Gmail, Maps, etc).
In response, Cyanogen simply split his modifications and improvements into a subset of image updates, which when bundled with HTC’s publicly available base “recovery” image (note: not the same as a “recovery environment image”), restored full functionality including Google’s precious app suite.
He even built and published a distribution mechanism app in the Android Market called CMUpdater, which will automatically reboot your phone into recovery, and flash an update in the CyanogenMod line of ROMs.
In short, he’s the man.
While his past work was done for the G1, supercharging it with bits of donut during cupcake days, and eclair in the donut days, he has undertaken to begin work on the Nexus One (N1). And the villagers rejoiced!
Taken from xda-devs:
Something to play with for now..
http://n0rp.chemlab.org/android/nexu…0.1-signed.zip
MD5Sum: 7b37d4313ea4a6dc2107352d837380dfThis is meant to be flashed over top of your existing stock Nexus One firmware (make a backup first!). This is NOT a full custom ROM yet. I won’t be releasing a full ROM until Google drops the 2.1 source code into AOSP.
Includes:
* Kernel with iptables, tun, USB RNDIS, wlan driver, other goodies
* /system/xbin with misc engineering bits
* Nano, htop, powertop, dropbear, etc
* Busybox
* Superuser Permissions app and matching suThanks to Zinx and Ben Buxton for the RNDIS patch. And Zinx again for the Superuser app (modified by me to work on SDK level 7).
Instructions..
Unlock your sh*t, flash and boot into Amon_RA’s recovery, do a Nandroid backup, and flash. Don’t wipe.
Then go and install wired tether, VPNC client, Adfree, N1 Torch, SetCPU to 1GHz and cook some bacon, all that good stuff.
Mmmmmm, bacon….. 
Ummmm, Cyanogen didn’t make the CMUpdater, he only hosts one of the servers that the CMUpdater can poll. That was a fellow XDA’er. Other then that, your facts are right on.
Hmm, my mistake then. It is published in the market by “Steve Kondik” which is Cyanogen’s real name.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.