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PowerPoint app makes pointing clearer

Call it a sign of maturity, but my eyesight isn't as sharp as it was when I was a teen. At least I'm not alone; I frequently hear requests to make the visuals in my PowerPoint slides larger. It's easy to pump up the volume of graphics and text, but one thing you can't easily enlarge is the pointer. Until now, that is: Here's a way to make your mouse pointer look like a large pointing stick.

PointerStick is a free little app for Windows that turns your mouse pointer into a large stick visible all the way in the back of a large conference room.

The program is small and portable, in the sense that you don't install anything -- just grab the program file and copy it to your laptop. When you run the program, you get PointerStick's Options screen, which lets you customize the size and color of the cursor and set how to turn it on and off. By default, a triple-click of the mouse will make the pointer appear and disappear, which I find is a convenient shortcut.

You can vary the length of the pointer from 64 to 1,000 pixels. I like to set my pointer to about 200 pixels for use in PowerPoint; it's large enough to be easily seen but not so big that it becomes a nuisance.

The program does what it was designed to do quite nicely; it gives you a way to call out elements on-screen in PowerPoint and other programs easily. If you are a frequent presenter, add this little app to your toolkit.

More on MoneyWatch:

For Winning Presentations, Be Steve Jobs, Not Mark Zuckerberg

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10 Rules for Smart-Looking Presentations

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