Instagram photos are all the rage these days. If you don't have the app, you seriously need to get it, because it's awe-some. You can make a boring old ice cream cone look like a work of art. Or yourself look like a supermodel (filters!). It's, in my opinion, the best form of social media, and everyone needs to be using it.

Now. Despite Instagram's ability to make the totally mundane sublime, there still are ways to kick your photos up a notch. Here are 7 ways to make a good Instagram photo great.

You've probably already seen #hashtags popping up in your Facebook feed, but pretty soon they might actually work. Yep, looks like Facebook is pondering copying Twitter and making hashtags clickable. Yay?

So far, of course, hashtags don’t actually work on Facebook -- at least not in the way they work on sites like Twitter and Instagram -- but that doesn’t seem to stop people from using them #amirite?

Rihanna seems to do pretty much exactly what she wants to do in life, without any pesky inhibitions, but it does seem that she has one person who scolds her for her bad-girl behavior every now and then -- her mom. RiRi told UK Elle that when Mom saw some naked photos Rihanna posted to Instagram, she gave her wild child an earful. "She went crazy on me, I was, like, embarrassed," Rihanna said. "I felt like I got my a-- whipped in front of my class at school!"

Understandable ... but, um, really? Some risque photos are what bothers Rihanna's mama? Of all the things being said and done by Rihanna, THIS is what her mom feels the need to scold her about?

Three people sent this new Internet Explorer commercial to me before 10 a.m. and now it's my turn to share. Calling it a commercial seems inadequate, though -- it's more like a warm hug from an old elementary school friend with whom you used to trade fuzzies, Gushers, and Pogs and fight over the Joystick with while playing Oregon Trail in the computer lab. Simply and eternally, this is the best form of marketing I've ever seen, and if you're also a child of the '90s, I guarantee you'll feel the same way.

In this 80-second ad, you'll yearn for the days before cellphones, Facebook, Instagram, and the Internet in general ... and if you're anything like me, you might tear up, just a little, because dammit, life was simpler in the '90s, and it was awesome.

One of the many reasons I'm such a fan of Instagram is that it's one of the only social networking sites that isn't "mean". Sure, it's yet another form of narcissism, what with people posting photos of their every move, but it's fun. And it doesn't seem to be riddled with controversial comments and nasty digs at one another like some social networks. At least I thought that was the case. An Instagram account by the name of "Ladue's Ugliest" was created recently, and the purpose of it was to post photos of "ugly" students at a middle school in Missouri. The account, not surprisingly, was run anonymously and the message in the profile read: "I take picture of people from Ladue and if you’re ugly, you’ll get posted."

Nice, right? But the scariest thing of all is what happened after the account was shut down by Instagram and a new one popped up.

In the wake of the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, semi-automatic weapon sales have skyrocketed, specifically for AR-15 rifles, the same gun that shooter Adam Lanza used to murder 20 children and six adults on that horrifying day. Gun shops can't seem to stay stocked, and there are even reports of long wait lists for the military rifles. In an even sicker twist, a lot of those weapons seem to have been given as Christmas gifts, and the recipients have been posting photos of themselves, posing with their new assault weapons. And a lot of them are women. Women. Holding assault rifles. WTF?

Why anyone needs weapons like this who isn't, you know, stationed in Afghanistan, is beyond me. But also, who gives someone else an assault weapon for Christmas???

Today, on The Daily Stir, I talk about Teen Mom Farrah Abraham's ridiculous gift idea, Instagram thinking they should be allowed to do whatever they want with your photos, David Beckham's son following in his daddy's modeling footsteps, and Paul Rudd in This Is 40. Check it out!

Update: After tremendous backlash, Instagram has backtracked and assured fans it won't be selling their images to be used in ads. The company said that "the language we proposed ... raised the question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we're going to remove the language that raised the question."

It's time to face the facts: For many people, Instagram has taken over, well ... everything. People are more into the app's cool filters than they ever were Facebook statuses, and instead of posting plain old Twitpics, they'd much rather apply a sepia filter to their Christmas tree photo and watch their friends "ooooh" and "ahhhhh" accordingly.

Which is why I'm SERIOUSLY perturbed today to find out that the app is going to bitch slap us all in the face.