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!

Do you know any iPhone users from our generation who do not use Instagram? Because I don’t.

Ever since its launch back in 2010, Instagram quickly became one of the most popular photo-editing and photo-sharing services for mobile devices. And while the company has recently announced that an Android version will be released “very soon,” Android users have been without the ubiquitous app for years.

I considered doing a round-up of all the best Instagram alternatives for Android, but I didn’t want to insult the intelligence of my readers.

Instead, I’ve decided to highlight my personal favorite photo app for Android: Camera360.

Camera360 is very much like Instagram and other photo apps in that it applies filters to the pictures you take with your phone camera. However, to me, what helps Camera360 stand out from its competition is its well-rounded mix of fun, professional, vintage-looking, as well as silly filters without being too overwhelming.

According to reports, Camera360 has already surpassed Instagram with 6 million users worldwide (as of June 2011), and for good reason: its high-quality filters and effects, as well as quick processing time, are vastly superior to many Instagram clones. By concentrating on the image processing, in addition to adding effects which are highly sought in Asia, Camera360 was quickly able to gain a strong user base in China, where it is most widely used.

As you can see from the screenshots below, Camera360 comes with a myriad of filter categories — 18 to be exact! — as well as sub-filters within most of the categories. (For example, the HDR filter category has five sub-filters: Soft, Gorgeous, Classic, Bright, and Storm.)

Additionally, you can enable one of the many frames, called “Scenes” — and as you can see below many of the frames are the type that inserts your picture into another one (e.g., poster, billboard, art).

What good is a review without some real-life examples? Here is a picture of Aerin I took yesterday — Miss Smileypants was especially giddy and splashy during her bath last night:

And here are four filters I have applied to the picture. The “Enhance” set of filters is especially great at adding an extra “pop” to any image:

One feature I love is that you can set the app to save the original version of the picture along with the edited — this is something that is missing from far too many photo apps.

Oh, and have you noticed the “Ghost” filter in the screenshot of filters above, and been wondering what it does? It adds a spooky, ghost-like figure of a girl to your picture. I won’t show it here — you’ll have to download the app to see it in its full glory!

Camera360 Ultimate — the full version of the app — used to sell for $3.99, but it is currently FREE in at Google Play (previously called The Android Market).

I have read that some people prefer the older version of the app, called Camera360 Memento, citing it to be more user-friendly and including a tilt-shift filter. Although I have this version also (it is also free), I personally prefer the Ultimate version — probably because I am more used to its UI.

Camera360 has actually replaced my default phone camera because it is that much better. The only thing I don’t like about it is that you can’t take any ol’ picture and apply the filters…but since I take all my pictures with Camera360 anyway, this doesn’t bother me too much.

Are you an iPhone user who has read this far? I’ve got good news for you: Camera360 is also available for the iPhone — for FREE — here!

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?

Last month, Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport became the first airport to install a BannerXpress kiosk and the banner printing machine couldn’t be more popular.

Installed at the airport’s arrivals area, BannerXpress allows friends and families of passengers to create and print “welcome home” banners with custom fonts, graphics, messages and background images. The kiosk accepts debit and credit cards and charges from around $5.30 for a small banner, to up to $20 for the largest option which are printed on a canvas material in just a couple of minutes.

BannerXpress has gotten so popular, in fact, that users began to seek it to print banners for parties and sports games. As a result, the company plans to expand its target locations to sports stadiums as well.

I have never been greeted at the airport with a sign — not even one from a paid driver — and have always looked to those who were warmly welcomed with banners with a degree of envy. (I always joke to J that the next time he picks me up from an airport, he better have a marching band ready like Marshall did for Lily on HIMYM. ) Something like BannerXpress would be the perfect solution for those who are short on time, creativity, or both to show their loved ones that they were missed. I can’t wait until these babies start making their way stateside!

Regardless of your stance on abortion, you can’t deny that these mock-ups, created in response to the reports of the iPhone 4S digital assistant’s inability to find abortion clinics, are pretty damn funny.

Via Happy Place.

I may be a geek and a gadget-lover, but I don’t always embrace new technology. I like to stay old-school in some aspects of my life, including my preferences of old-fashioned books over e-readers, physical keyboards over touchscreens, and even a pad & pencil over many phone apps.

And this is precisely why I love the Little Printer.

Created by London-based design firm BERG and running on BERG Cloud, a web-based system for controlling wireless products, the Little Printer is an adorable web-enabled printer that prints mini-newspapers containing content from the Internet. Users select the content — anything from news to puzzles to status updates from friends — using an iPhone or Android app.

In other words, it makes mini receipt-sized newspapers!

Check out these examples of what the Little Printer can spit out — birthday reminders, puzzles, news headlines, and  to-do lists…oh my!

For more uses (including a running coach), be sure to check out the website!

I know that some readers may see the Little Printer as a giant waste of ink and paper. But I know that anyone who prefers physical reminders and lists over digital ones — or even anyone with an often-used bulletin board, would greatly appreciate this little device.

Besides, it’s just so darn cute.

Pre-orders for the Little Printer will begin in 2012, at which point Little Printer will launch in beta form.

Via TechCrunch.