The sheer number of OXO products available and the variety of price points they are built to makes it inevitable that some of them will be duds. Indeed, over time it has become clear that the presence of the brand on an item does not necessarily guarantee good design or build quality. That said, I have found their Good Grips steel measuring cups to be a great success in both regards. After more than a year of daily use, I still can’t think of anything that would improve them.

Like most sets, a ring is included to keep them together when nested. Traditionally, the ring is troublesome because removing a cup also requires the removal of cups that come before it. This problem has been solved by opening the handles’ holes on one side, allowing you to pull a cup off of the ring via the opening and then simply clip it back in place. Additionally, the rubber on the handle is set back a good bit from the cup, allowing for easy leveling with a knife.

The build quality is excellent. The cup and handle are fashioned from a single piece of surprisingly thick steel, eliminating the weakness of a weld point. Each cup’s measurement value is permanently inlaid into the rubber handle, such that no amount of scrubbing will take it off.

A similar plastic set is also produced under the Good Grips moniker. It features the same open-holed handles and inlaid measurement values and is slightly cheaper than the steel set, but it takes up more room by including unnecessary ⅔ and ¾ cups.

Regardless of whether you opt for steel or plastic, these cups will probably be the last set you ever buy.

Oxo Good Grips Measuring Cup Set, Stainless Steel, 4-Pc
$20

Available from Amazon

Lately I’ve been buying card magic instructional DVDs (I recommend the Royal Road To Card Magic by R. Paul Wilson 5-DVD Boxed Set in conjunction with the classic book of the same name). I wanted to watch these DVDs on my iPhone while on a plane, so I used Handbrake, a free open source video transcoder, to rip the DVDs into MP4 files.

But the standard way to get movies on an iPhone is to use iTunes. I don’t like using iTunes as much as I used to. It’s become a bloated, confusing catch-all. Apple needs to reboot iTunes.

The Mophie Space pack lets me avoid using iTunes. It’s a protective case for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s that contains a 1700mAh battery and 16GB of built-in storage. That’s enough for about 7 hours of video.

Transferring video files couldn’t be simpler. The storage shows up as a hard drive on your computers desktop when you connect your phone. It’s a simple matter to drag MP4 files (or any other kind of file) into the drive. Then, I can watch the movies using the Mophie Space app on my phone (it has its own player). The battery doubles the energy capacity of the phone, too, which means I can watch videos on a long flight and still have juice to summon Uber when I my plane lands.

The Mophie Space Pack also comes in handy when I’m on my computer and I come across an MP3 of a podcast or interview I want to listen to later. I just drag the file into the storage icon and it will be on my phone when I’m ready to listen.

Mophie Space Pack for Apple iPhone 5/5S – Retail Packaging
$150

Available from Amazon

In October Kevin Kelly spoke at XOXO about making things, experimenting, traveling, and discovering and using cool tools.

Kevin is wearing the pink turban.

Subscribe to the Cool Tools Podcast on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page

This week Veronica Belmont stops by to share some of the tools that make her life as a professional podcaster for the show Sword & Laser a little easier. Veronica’s creative, beautifully made picks are highly recommended for anyone looking to break into the audio/visual or social media arenas.

Veronica’s Podcast, Sword & Laser

Veronica’s Twitter

Veronica’s Ello 

Show Notes:

Patreon

“It’s a crowd-funding service not too much unlike Kickstarter, except on Patreon people pay per episode or per week or per month and they can chip in as little or as much as they want. So, you can chip in a dollar per episode or per month and you can also put a cap on the amount that you chip in each month.”

Every time zone

“I do a lot of meetings with people across the country, a lot of phone calls, a lot of planning for shoots and podcasts and things like that, and I can never keep timezones straight. This site makes it really easy. It has a physical slider at the top that you can drag back and forth and it’ll give you automatically a list of all the times and all the different time zones in order.”

Levelator

“Levelator is probably the single most important little app for anyone who does podcasting or any kind of audio editing, really. They’re on their second iteration now. It’s a free tool for Windows, OS X, and Linux and it just works amazingly well. All you have to do is drag in your WAV file or AIFF file and it  basically evens all the audio out.”

Rootcup

“You can do trimmings from succulents or other plants and then you stick them into the Root Cup and fill the cup with water and then it grows roots! It’s that simple, but I just love the design and I love how easy it is… They come in a few different sizes and colors and I just think they’re cute and creative and they look good as potters as well, just having as planters around the house.”

Ello

“It’s pretty neat. It’s a social network that was created by designers and you can kind of see that in the design. It’s really clean and nicely done. They had a pretty big ground swell of people signing up all at once when it hit the Twitters people started sharing it and sending out invites. It’s always hard because new social networks pop up all the time and I always try to figure out what their use case is for me. You want to be able to put the right content in the right places and reach certain audiences in a certain way. I haven’t quite figured out what I want Ello to be for me yet.”

This is by far the best Utility Knife (box cutter) I know of. I have been using them for 12+ years.

1) They “fit your hand” very well – almost like custom made.
2) The blade comes out easily – just press the black leaver underneath.
3) The blade retracts easily and safely – black button
4) There is a storage area for new blades – behind the word Alltrade
5) The blades exchange easily and safely – yellow button. Simply press the yellow button and pull the used blade out. The new blade automatically loads when the device retracts.

Due to their sturdy construction, I can do “heavy duty” jobs without the device slipping.

Alltrade 150003 Auto-Loading Squeeze Utility Knife
$12

Available from Amazon

This bottle opener takes a relatively mundane task and turns it into a pleasurable aesthetic experience. The beauty of this opener is in its design simplicity. It is made of a piece of wood, a bent nail and two magnets. That’s it. The leverage from the nail opens beer bottles easily, one magnet catches the bottle cap and the other magnet makes it easy to mount on a fridge or other metal surface.

I have owned one for over a year and it is always my go-to bottle opener above any of my skeleton key style bottle openers. The handle is comfortable and, while the magnetic cap catching capability might seem superfluous at first, I am always grateful for it once I’m a few bottles into the evening. The mounting magnet keeps the handle open from the perspective of the plane of the surface to which it is mounted making it easy to grab in a time of need.

I was originally gifted this tool and have gifted it myself on several occasions. All recipients have reported back with delight at this opener’s simple beauty and practical usefulness.

Of course, there are much less costly alternatives (including your teeth, the edge of a hard surface