Welcome to today’s installment of Cool Tool Tuesdays, where I feature a favorite item from my life and spotlight it so that others who are not familiar with the product may also benefit from it. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, hardware, material, or website that I have personally tried and love.

Do you have any questions about today’s cool tool? Would you like an item featured in the future? Please leave a comment to this post, or send me a message via my contact form. Enjoy!

Some people like to rough up their gadgets, add personalizations, and give it some character.

I am not one of those people. In fact, I am the complete opposite: I like to keep my gadgets looking as new as the first day I got them.

(This also helps tremendously with their resell values. I was able to sell my old 4-year-old PowerBook for $500!)

Loyal readers may remember that my beloved MacBook Pro died on me last fall. And when I finally got a replacement, I knew that I wanted to protect my investment. After all, it was THE biggest purchase I had made in years, in addition to being a fragile item I knew I would be using every day.

1. Protecting the Keyboard

One of the reasons I was so sad to have my old MBP die on me is because I vastly prefer the old body design of the MBP over the newer, unibody construction. (Anyone else with me?)

And the thing I hate the most about the unibody MBP? The black plastic keys.

A comparison between the unibody MBP (left) and the older model, which I had (right).
(image source) 

I loved the silver keys on the old MBP — a design which carried over from the PowerBook days, which was actually my first Apple computer back in 2001 — and believe that the black keys have a cheap feel to them compared to the silver ones. (Although to be fair, the silver keys were made of plastic too. However, they were sprayed with a matte silver finish that made them look metallic.)

And wouldn’t you know it — my fears were confirmed when, just TWO WEEKS into using my new MBP, shiny spots began to appear on the space bar and a couple of other most-used keys.

These shiny spots were not oil spots. Instead, they were “wear and tear” spots, from the matte finish on the keys wearing away.

A brief perusal of the web told me that indeed, this is a common problem among unibody MBP users and that the best course of action is to purchase a keyboard protector.

NOW YOU TELL ME!

I quickly discovered that best keyboard protector for the MBP is the Moshi ClearGuard, which is advertised as the thinnest keyboard cover/protector on the market at 0.1mm thin, or one-fifth the thickness of silicone protectors.

You might think that the $25 price tag is pretty steep for a piece of plastic. But I freakin LOVE this thing. It creates a bit more traction for typing, it allows for the keyboard lights to shine through, and I no longer need to worry about small spills, tiny particles entering the inside of my MBP through the keyboard cracks, or the dreaded shiny wear-and-tear spots on my keyboard.

The best part? It is washable and reusable!

As for the existing shiny spots on my keyboard? They were bothering me so much (yeah, I’m OCD with my gadgets) that I tried a potentially dangerous remedy: the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Because the Magic Eraser is a very fine abrasive, and because I would be wetting it before use, there was some potential for disaster.

However, I squeezed out all but the teeniest amount of water from the Magic Eraser before use, and very gently rubbed the offending spots. It took about 5 minutes of rubbing per key, but it worked. My keys looked brand new again. Problem fixed.

3. Protecting the Body

What about the rest of the MBP? I certainly wanted to protect it from scratches as well as dinges and dents, which are all very likely with a very clumsy owner and two young children at home.

I decided that a hard case — despite the extra girth it would add, in addition to covering the beautiful design of the MBP — would be best suited for my needs and decided on Speck Products’ SeeThru Satin Case.

Installation was a snap — literally — and I love that the material is a smooth, rubbery texture. It has already protected my MBP from a number of incidents which would have surely left ugly scratches on the beautiful aluminum finish, and the case doubles as a sleeve for travel purposes.

It is also transparent enough to let the lighted Apple logo softly shine through:

3. Cleaning the MacBook Pro

When I replaced my PowerBook with a MacBook Pro in 2008, I purchased an iKlear Cleaning Kit along with it.

And if you too, own an Apple product, you should get one too.

iKlear is the only brand that is used by Apple in its stores to get its products clean. It is both ammonia and alcohol free — both of which are chemicals that can damage your screen. (This isn’t false information to boost the sales of iKlear and other products like it. I have a friend who used an alcohol-based wipe on his MacBook Pro and it left a permanent streak.)

There are various iKlear kits available for sale, but all you really need are the basic three items: the spray, the antimicrobial microfiber cloth, and the chamois cloth. (The microfiber cloth is to clean the entire product in conjunction with the spray, while the chamois cloth is used dry, to buff the screen.)

If that isn’t incentive enough for you, I am still using the same exact kit I purchased in 2008. This stuff lasts a loooong time, and is completely worth every penny.

Which products, if any, do you use to keep your laptop — as well as other gadgets — clean and protected? Can you recommend any alternatives to the three I’ve listed above?

This weekend, as he does every year, J will be decorating our home for Lunar New Year with various Chinese paper cutouts and prints which are meant to ward off bad spirits and bring good fortune to the household in the new year.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Chinese culture, the Lunar New Year is a BIG deal in China. Workers usually take an entire month off so that they can travel to be with their families, and the weeks-long celebrations are loud, exuberant, and can be pretty intense. Since J’s birthday falls in the same week as the Lunar New Year Day this year, he will be taking the entire week off next week to properly celebrate both.

Koreans are not quite as into the Lunar New Year as the Chinese are, so I usually just sit back and watch him do his thing and only participate when asked to. However, when I happened upon these adorable paper crafts by Canon, I just knew that I needed to add to our New Year decorations with them.

The best part? They are all FREE and available on the Canon website! All you need to do is print them out and follow the accompanying instructions.

Message Dolls (Wealth Dolls)
Chinese Lantern
String Decoration: Lion Dance	String Decoration: Fortune
Chinese Dragon	Lion Dance

I had no idea such a fun section existed on the electronics giant’s website. I am particularly in love with the Milky Way Decoration Set, which is inspired by one of my favorite tales from childhood. (I thought for sure that this was a Korean fairytale, but apparently the same story exists in China and Japan too.) You can be sure that I will be making it for — or even with — my girls in the near future.

Be sure to check out the rest of Paper Crafts by Canon site for more great projects! 

I am loving the Word as Image project and the accompanying book. Started 20 years ago as an assignment in typography class in art school, Ji Lee creates images out of words by contorting the letters that form the word itself.

Anyone can create a word as image. It doesn’t require any design or drawing skills. All you need is a little creative thinking and to see words and letters in a different way. The dictionary is filled with thousands of fun visual puzzles just waiting to be solved.

Now that I think about it, I can recall that I learned the word “parallel” — which happens to be one of the words pictured below — by remembering the three parallel lines embedded within the word, just as Lee illustrates.

Can you think of any other “word as image” examples? Join in on the conversation at the Word as Image Facebook Page!

Via My Modern Met.

IKEA has once again teamed up with photographer Carl Kleiner for a new campaign that highlights its kitchenware. Evoking the successful Homemade is Best campaign, Kleiner, in conjunction with stylist Evelina Bratell, has beautified simple bowls, plates, utensils, and the like into divine works of art.

For more information, be sure to check out www.carlkleiner.com and minkmgmt.com.

Via Trendland.

Update:  This giveaway has ended. Congratulations to Elisa T, who entered via Twitter!

If you are anything like me, you would probably agree that most baby books out on the market are crap. They are usually pretty cheesy and most do not have anything extra special about them.

This is the primary reason I was thinking about forgoing the baby book route when I was pregnant with Claire. (That, and the fact that I’m a complete idiot when it comes to scrapbooking.) And then I read about L’album des trésors de bébé on my friend Kelly’s blog…

The book is incredibly cute, with gorgeous (gender-neutral) colors and patterns used throughout its pages without being tacky. The graphics are adorable and unobtrusive, and even the quality of the thick paper is superb.

One of the best parts about this book is that it comes packaged in a box that has slide-out drawers along its side — perfect for storing the scrapbooking supplies used for the book!

The only “con” that I could see with this book is that it is entirely in French. But in these days of Google Translate, that should not pose much of a problem for any determined user. Heck, I actually consider the book being in French one of its charms!

Now, because it is a dreary Monday in January…

And to celebrate my move to a new web host…

I will be giving away a copy of L’album des trésors de bébé
to one lucky reader!

Are you pregnant, or planning to become pregnant, and in search of a baby book to call your own? Do you know someone who is pregnant, or is a new mother? Even if you do not plan on having babies anytime in the near future, you should enter anyway so that you can have this marvelous piece stored away for future use.

To enter this giveaway, simply use the Rafflecopter widget below. Not sure how to use Rafflecopter? Watch this 45 second video for a tutorial on how to enter a giveaway using Rafflecopter. There are 5 methods of entry, with the first method (commenting on this blog post) being mandatory while the third method (Tweeting about the giveaway) can be used once per day:

This giveaway will end on Friday, January 13th, 2012, at 11:59pm, at which point a winner will be randomly chosen and announced here.

Please use a valid email address and/or Twitter handle so that I can contact you if you win!

Sorry, this giveaway is open only to residents of the U.S.

Good luck, and thanks for entering!