Tip o’ the Week #273 – Projecting your Windows Phone

It’s often handy to be able to show to an audience what’s happening on a phone’s screen (or other device) . Many an A/V technician has had to deal with the challenges of switching from PowerPoint bore-ware to an analogue ELMO  projector, trying to set autofocus so as not to make the audience sick, and the light levels balanced enough so people can actually see what’s going on.

There are a few options for projecting what’s happening on your phone using a more modern solution – you can use Miracast to send images over Wifi to a suitable telly or projector (though it can be a “fragile” process) .

If you have a No-KEE-Ah phone (you may need IE compatibility mode or Chrome to show that page properly) , you may want to check to see if Wifi projection is supported on your device (NB: 820, 920 and 1020 are not on the list) . See the Help for more details of either wired & WiFi solutions.

If you’re presenting using a PC anyway, why not cable up your phone over USB and run the separately-installed Project My Screen app instead? All you need to do is install & run the app on the PC, plug the phone in, and you’ll get a prompt to mirror the display of the phone on the PC, and Bob’s Your Uncle.

Symbol Swipe

Onething you might want to show your friends is how they can more easily use Word Flow on their phone, and maybe how to quickly swipe symbols and numbers (a tip courtesy of Robert Deupree Jr. and his excellent Microsoft internal Yammer group) – in a nutshell, tap and hold the “&123” symbol key in the bottom left of the keyboard, and instead of then tapping the key you’d like – such as a number – instead, keep your finger on the &123 key and then swipe to end up on the destination key, then release to go back to the standard keyboard layout.

It maybe sounds more complex than it looks - so is probably easier to show than explain.