Gadgetory

hello and welcome to cnet's to fix the show about do-it-yourself tech and how to's I'm Donald Bell and i'm eric franklin and the holidays are almost here and there's no easier way to get into that holiday spirit than to listen to the handful of holiday songs that don't drive you crazy yeah it's kind of a fine line between catchy and insanity when it comes to holiday music for sure so if you're looking for a way to separate your normal music from your holiday music we're gonna show you how to do just that nothing gets you in the holiday spirit faster than holiday music but once New Year's rolls around you don't want to listen to jingle bell rock for another 11 months but in this air of the mp3 how do you keep your holiday tunes handy while at the same time keeping them out of your workout mix I'm gonna show you how first step we're gonna open up itunes it doesn't matter if you're on the iphone or android or if you haven't touched itunes and years it's still one of the easiest ways to import your music and get it on a playlist and that's what you're gonna do you're gonna make a playlist for holiday music and then you're gonna dump whatever you have in there next select all in that playlist and then select get info on the options tab check the box that says skip win shuffling in the off chance that one of these tunes still make their way to your phone this will ensure that they don't pop up during a shuffle finally with your songs still selected hit copy and then create a new folder on your desktop called holiday music and paste the songs in the folder next we're going to upload these to a freak loud music player now the two that most people already signed up for whether they know it or not our Amazon music and Google Music both are free and both work with mac or pc or android or iOS and because you're probably not taking advantage of either one they make a great place to stash music that you only listen to occasionally in my case i'll go with amazon music yet over to amazon.com / cloud player and then you log in with your amazon ID click the button for import your library find the holiday music folder you created select it and then hit import all once uploaded you'll find all of your holiday music included on the recently added playlist on your amazon cloud player to turn it into a permanent playlist check the select all box at the top of the list then click add the playlist and create a new playlist called holiday music finally to take your holiday music on the go you're going to want to download the amazon music app or the google music app if that's the way you went then sign in and find your playlist from here you can shuffle the songs in your playlist and you can delete them on the fly and let's not forget the best part once the holidays are over instead of deleting your holiday songs one at a time you can just delete the whole app or ignore the app until the holidays roll around next year so there you go that's how to get your holiday tunes up and running without a contaminating the rest of the music on your phone have a happy holiday and a great jingle bell free all right I am in a festive mood right now calm it down alright I will thank you that you're welcome alright time for a quick break and when we come back we've got a DIY how to create your own photo booth using gadgets and technology you probably already have you welcome back all right so photo booth yes they're great to have around weddings yes birthday party totally special events like the holidays yeah for sure and Lexi savita shows us how to make our own using a DSLR camera or a tablet and its really really cool festive celebrations are a great time to capture all those holiday memories on camera and to make it even more fun i'm going to show you two ways on how to make your own DIY photo booth the first method is using a tablet as your camera and the second method is for better quality photos using a DSLR and then sending those photos wirelessly to a tablet make sure that there's a good Christmassy backdrop you have some fun props and your scene has plenty of lights first let's set up the tablet option you'll need a tablet tripod and photo booth apps that your tablet to a tripod or a secure surface facing the backdrop for ipad i'm using the studio proper tripod mount which attaches easily to the back of the dedicated case depending on your operating system choose an app to run your photo booth i'm going to use pocket brief for this demo and it runs on both iOS and Android like a real photo booth it takes four photos in a row and it ranges them in a strip after they've been taken this method is quick and fun but using the front-facing camera doesn't always produce the best quality shots so for the best photos you can get I'm going to show you a DSLR method grab your camera and an eye-fi mobi card it's got built-in Wi-Fi so it can transfer images to a tablet or smartphone automatically it's also compatible with the majority of cameras on the market even older models insert the card into your camera and then download the iphone mobi app for iOS or android on your tablet launch the app and enter the 10 digit activation code on the I Phi case now all the photos you take on your camera will automatically transfer to your tablet on your camera we're going to shoot JPEG images only for speed and disable the auto power off options so we don't lose our Wi-Fi connection if your camera has a knife I setting in the menus make sure to enable the card like this start taking photos by getting your subjects press a remote shutter release or set up your camera's self timer option you can either have your tablet near the camera so people can see their photos immediately or have it a short distance away so passers-by can see those photos too once you've taken all your photos it's really easy to send them to a printer straight from the app or save them to your gallery and then send to a printer using air print or Google Cloud Print so there you have it a DIY photo booth two ways happy holidays I'm Alexis avedis and i'll catch you next time you know as cynical as I can be sometimes I really do like the photo booth thing we had at the holiday party last year and it's really really fun hey have you ever tried using a touchscreen with the glove yeah of course it doesn't always work we're going to show you a DIY on making your own touchscreen glove and it is quick and easy there are many touchscreen friendly gloves available for purchase but if you don't want your options to be limited or you already own a pair of gloves that you love there are a couple of easy ways to make any gloves work with your smartphone or tablet the reason that gloves don't work with your screen is because the fabric blocks a static electricity from your finger so we need a way to channel that electricity through the glove the way to do that is with conductive thread you can find the stuff online for about 10 bucks I have my thread a needle and my gloves the plan is to sew a few stitches into the fingertips I want to be able to use with the phone in this case it's my index finger and my thumb for the thumb I'll put stitches closer to the edge of my finger which is where I would touch the screen for a pinch to zoom gesture now if I do this correctly it should work with my screen it won't work with my fingerprint scanner of course but I should still be able to unlock my phone and enter my password oh yeah it works perfectly let's try that pinch-to-zoom if it's not working for you or the connection is inconsistent go back and add a few stitches to make sure there's a good connection between your finger and the conductive thread another way to make your gloves touchscreen friendly is by using a product called nano tips it's a conductive liquid specifically designed to make any gloves touchscreen friendly and according to the company this will even work on those thicker leather gloves my case I have another pair of regular knit gloves that I'm going to try this on but this time I'm going to make sure that there's a buffer between two sides of the fabric for that I'll use a spoon so just put the spoon up through here and the way nano tips works is you just use the brush to completely saturate the fabric whatever part is covered by nano tips should work with your touch screen if you let nano tips air dry it'll take a couple of hours but if you want to speed up the process you can use a hairdryer and that should only take a couple of minutes feels dry so I'll take the spoon out and give this a shot okay so if you're finding that it's not responsive you might want to go back and add a few more layers of the solution to make sure that there's a really good connection but once you're there you should be able to use the gloves with your touchscreen with no problem and what's great about nano tips and even the conductive thread is that you should have enough material to take care of more than one pair of gloves that's it for this week's show we hope you enjoyed it yeah you guys should reach out to us you can send us an email at the fixed at cnet com send us your questions your comments send us your full booth pictures your holiday music playlist or don't send those that see in those you can also reach us on twitter i'm at be doable and i'm at Donald see you next time guys right here on the face see ya