CNET to the Rescue: What to get after E3

Josh is back from E3, with buying advice--including a laughable plastic laptop pad. Plus: we answer your questions on old and busted iPhones and iPods. And we get all networky.

Watch this: What to get after E3

33:19

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Josh's E3 takeaways and recomendations:
Motion-control
-Natal looked like the simplest with nothing that you need to keep in your hands
-Very cool demos of PlayStation Move at the Sony press conference. 1:1 motion in Tiger Woods, and upcoming "Socery," which lets you do Harry Potter-like spells with the Move controller.

3D
-Nintendo's 3DS of course, which was announced and demoed, but not given a price or release date. Nintendo was letting people play with 3DS units attached to booth babes.
-saw cool demos of 3D at the Sony Press conference, games like Gran Turismo 5 and Killzone 3. Effect was neat but slightly nauseating. Might have been the massive screen we were watching it on...

Console
-new Xbox 360 "s". Smaller, quieter, built-in Wi-Fi (normally a $99 peripheral), and has a new port on the back that will power Kinect, unlike for the older 360s--which need an extra A/C plug to get it to work. Still no Blu-ray though.

Games to get
-Wii: Donkey Kong Country returns, Kirby's Epic Yarn, and Goldeneye remake
-everything else: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Fallout: New Vegas, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Road tests:
Rafe: Angry Birds

Using Outlook with Gmail - works great!

Josh: Lapdesk, Timbuk2 bag, Cliff Bars

Questions
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Garrett: Surprise surprise, I'd like to get rid of my old iPhone and get a new iPhone 4. I currently have a 3G and have had it for almost 2 years. Naturally it has become saturated with not only personal settings and files, but also personal data and information, namely passwords and other things of this nature. What is the best way to completely remove all of this information and ensure that it is not available for recovery in the future? I know that the phone has the "Reset All Content And Settings" option, which, quite frankly, seems all too convenient. Will performing this function eradicate all data and settings so that it cannot be recovered by someone at a later date? Perhaps I sound a bit paranoid, but I know that if anyone can understand the desire to recycle technology while maintaining privacy, it's you guys. I thought this topic may be apropos in light of the upcoming release of the iPhone 4 and the madness that is sure to follow.

Great question, and...It works! In fact, it actually overwrites your data with random bits. That's why it can take more than an hour.

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Michael: I recently bought a refurbished second generation iPod Touch off Apple's site to save some money. Then I learned that the new IOS will have multitasking, which I would love to have in my iPod, but as you know apple says that the hardware is unable to handle multiple tasks at one time. I was just wondering if there will be any way for me to trick iTunes into thinking my iPod is newer than it is or if there is anyway for me to be able to multitasking. My iPod is not currently jail-broken but if it would allow me to run the full IOS 4 i would consider doing that. Thank you for you time. Love the show!

Josh: You can't trick iTunes into thinking your iPod or iPhone is something it isn't (at least easily), but you can get multitasking on non-iOS4 devices by jailbreaking and downloading either ProSwitcher or Multifl0w from Cydia. That said, your iPod--if it's a first generation iPod touch, is probably too slow to get much use out of this.

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Bruce: My pictures used to open with one program, now they open with another. How can I fix that? Bruce

You can change file associations.

Josh: And if you're on a Mac, you can find the "open with" menu by right clicking on any file, and choosing the "get info" option.

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Andrea: I have a small business and Web site. I would like to pay someone to advertise and upkeep my RSS feed but I don't have any idea what to pay them to do it since I don't know much about it. I have heard it is a great advertising tool. I don't have the time to do it myself, but I would be willing to hire someone. How can I find out what reasonable pay would be so they would monitor and do a good job?

Depending in what system you're using to publish your web site, you outlay for keeping up your RSS feed should range from $0 to $0. Nearly all publishing systems, especially blogs, automatically keep up RSS feeds of sites. Just search for RSS plus the name of your publishing system for the details.

Josh: As per the advertising bit, places like Google-owned Feedburner can advertise your RSS feed. There's also Google AdSense for feeds.

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Liana: Hey guys! I am loving the new show and I am excited to finally have a question for you guys! So I have been a BlackBerry user for years but I have recently been thinking of switching to an Android, probably the Evo. Is there anyway to easily transfer things such as tasks, contacts, memos, etc., from one system to another? I use my phone for work and would hate to have to re-create it all on a new phone. Thanks so much and keep up the good work!

Josh: Hi Liana. If you're a Windows user, the easiest way is to fire up Outlook Express and transfer all that data to the program. Then, take your new Evo, and sync it up with Outlook Express. Done. Another option is to take both phones in to a Sprint store, and they'll it for you. A third option, that requires no humans or computers is to simply transfer over all that stuff via Bluetooth from one phone to the other, although this can take a while.

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Robert: I would like to activate encryption on my home wireless network, the only problem is we have a few computers that have wireless cards which do not support connecting to encrypted wireless networks. Because of this, I have chosen not to broadcast our SSID, however I realize this is not an ideal solution. Do you know of any other ways to protect our network, keeping in mind that a few of the computers on our network do not support connecting to an encrypted network?

If you have wireless cards that are so old they don't support encryption, get new wireless cards. Modern USB Wi-Fi cards are like $13. Not broadcasting SSIDs can slow down casual Wi-Fi thieves, but it's not a total solution. Wi-Fi scanners can still grab your packets.

Jeremiah: Can I use the same domain name across different service providers for different services? For example, if I own www.cats.com, can I use Gmail to handle my e-mail and some squarespace/wordpress/tumblr service to host my blog/Web site? I'm not sure how to do this because it seems that the DNS server settings on my registrar can only point to one place.

Yes. Easiest solution for this is to go to the registrar where your name record is, and change the MX field to point to your e-mail server. Most registrants and e-mail services will have instrux, and you'll need to go to them to get details. Or, if you are using a service that hosts both blogs and e-mail (iow, not tumblr or Wordpress), but still want to use Gmail to access your e-mail, you can simply set up Gmail to access the POP or IMAP accounts at your hosting company.

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Comments

Scott: Thank you so much for for the recommendation of Things for Mac. I was using RTM for past several years and was getting tired of trying to mold it to the GTD (Getting Things Done) philosophy. The RTM iPhone app was OK, but the Web interface was just plain weird and clunky. Then about a month ago I heard you mention Things on a Buzz Out Loud episode and I have some unspent birthday money lying around and l made the plunge into Things for Mac and Things for the iPhone/Touch. I couldn't be happier. I love the look, feel and powerful simplicity of this app. It fits GTD perfectly. It IS a little spendy, but worth it in the long run. I've tried all the Todo apps you mentioned and more. Nothing fits GTD like Things.

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Andy: First of all, I recently discovered CNETTV and love every minute of it. I'm glad the "Real Deal" is still going. On to the good stuff. I was listening to episode 2 all about Android. I love Android. When Josh was talking about apps and said there was a specific app that you need root for and Rafe asked why you would want root. I wished that I was listening live so I could call in and tell you about the awesomeness that is root on android. There are lots of reasons to get root, besides being a geek. There are several cool apps you can get, like Wi-Fi tethering that you need for root. But the biggest reason to get root is community ROMs. Anyone who has a g1/myt3g/droid/nexus1 should check out http://cyanogenmod.com. Cyanogen does an incredible community ROM with tons of features and improvements. I have a G1, which currently officially only runs 1.6 (doughnut) Android and won't get anything else, but through the power of the community my phone actually is running 2.1 and will run 2.2 when it comes out. So even though T-Mobile/Google has left us early adopters out in the cold, the community hasn't. If you have an Android phone, especially an older one, you should definitely look at rooting. Hope that wasn't too long winded.

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