How many times have you watched someone nervously struggling to start a PowerPoint presentation by using the mouse to click on the little bitty icon in the lower right hand side of the screen? The cursor is shaking all over the screen as they attempt to click on the icon that looks like a screen projector. When I am in the audience and someone is struggling with this, I become just as nervous as the presenter and I often want to shout “F5, just hit the F5 function key and we will all feel better!”
PowerPoint offer several ways to begin a full screen presentation. One way is to click on the little bitty projector screen icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen. Another way is to click on the Slide Show tab and then click on Begin show from the beginning. You could also save your presentation as a PowerPoint Show or .pps file. In this format, double clicking on the icon will open your presentation in “show” mode without going to the edit screen first. Finally, you can just hit the F5 key and you can begin your presentation with ease.
The iPhone app that gave me the most joy would have to be the Pokemon Go app. After I figured out how to catch Pokemon, I spent hours trying to catch them and add them to my collection. I also spent more time outside trying to hatch eggs and discovering sites around town. Connecting with and getting to other Pokemon trainers added to the excitement of this app.
My favorite Mac app from 2016 is Grapher. This is a little known app that lets you graph equations similar to the way a TI-84 graphing calculator would. Grapher probably would not replace your TI-84, but it does come in handy as a simple alternative.
The Windows 10 app that I discovered in 2016 and truly fell in love with is the Windows Photos app. When I first installed Windows 10 with the free upgrade, I hated the Windows 10 Photos app. It seemed to take forever to load and I had no idea what it could do for me. However, once I learned about the power of this free app (or at least included with the operating system), it became my go to app for photo editing. It can not only do constrained cropping, but it also reads and allows viewing of my camera raw files. I am amazed at the power at my finger tips with this app.