Prepping for your Valentine’s Day with Windows 8 Metro Apps

Making Valentine’s Day Special with Help from HP (Day 4)

So, only a couple days left until Valentine’s Day!  Are you excited??  Someone here will be waking up to an email that says they’ve won a HP ENVY X2 Laptop (that seamlessly doubles as a tablet) AND a Photosmart eAIO 7520 printer!!  HOW EXCITING IS THIS??  I really can’t wait to see whose name will be randomly drawn from Rafflecopter once we hit midnight into February 14th! WOOT!

So today, I figured it would be a good day to show how you can organize the Windows 8 Start page to better maximize your time for upcoming holidays.  It’s truly simple, though not readily apparent, so hopefully this will help a few of you out.  (Click on the images below to see the larger sizes.)

This is a bit of what my Start/Metro Screen looks like for my laptop.  With 8 Apps bunched together and placed right where I’ll see it first when the screen loads, I can access the files I need right away.  I obviously won’t need these apps grouped together after Valentine’s Day, but it’s easy enough to drag the tiles from one group to another, so that’s not something that I’m concerned about. Come February 15th, I’ll separate these Windows 8 applications into groups that are more suited for day-to-day usage.

 

Tile groups are created by dragging the icons around on the Start screen.  If you right-click a tile, there’s an option on whether to make it smaller or larger (whether the icon takes up one space or two.)  It did take me a while though to figure out how to label the group… you know, just so I wouldn’t forget why these apps were grouped together; but it’s probably one of the easiest things to do in the Metro screen.

This tip I’m going to show you requires a mouse.  If there’s a way to do the same thing while in touchscreen mode, I have yet to find it!

First thing to do is to click the “-” box at the very bottom, right-hand corner.

You will see all of your Metro tiles in pint size (and if you want to get out of this screen, just click anywhere around the tiles.)  Right click the tile group you wish to label/rename; this will bring up a hidden bar at the bottom of your screen as shown below.

Click on the Name group button, and label the group as you see fit.  Once you’re done with your labelling fun, click anywhere around the tiles to get out of this “hidden” screen.

Now let’s check out the group of Apps that I’ve chose for Valentine’s Day!

• 
  The CyberLink YouCam is an easy to use camera app with up to 8MPs of clearity! Even while using your tablet as your music player, this app will take all the gorgeous photos you want it to on the 14th. It also doubles as a video camera if you want to turn your kid’s antics into a timeless moment!  Also?  Thanks to the Photosmart eAIO 7520 printer from HP, you can print those pics right away without any other setup.  Click the ePrint button, and as long as there’s photo-paper in the right trays, your photos will be printed instantly.
• 
  For those whose significant others are not close by for Valentine’s Day, you can still keep in touch (and even have a simulcasted candle-lit dinner if set up beforehand,) with your loved one. 🙂
• 
  Enjoy photos from your past over your special meal.  Windows 8 has a beautiful collage app that automatically rotates images from your selected sources (as shown below.)
• 
  Between Netflix and xbox video you have a TON of awesome movies and TV shows to watch on demand. Imagine snuggling up with your partner and watching Skyfall in your lap, lol. This is a movie that The Hubs and I have yet to see, so am going to bring on the Puppy Dog Eyes of Doom to convince him to rent it for the night.
  
• 
  I spoke about this app at length yesterday, though I did make an edit today! Turns out there is a super-simple Search function. All you have to do is swipe open the Windows 8 Charms from the right hand of the screen and use the Search icon to find exactly what you want right away.
• 
  Using the Windows 8 App store, I found a multitude of cook books to choose from, but even at a cost of $4.99 the iCookBook app sounds like THE app to use to find recipes. A great free alternative is AllRecipes (which is always in the top three results whenever you search for a recipe on google.) The awesome bit? I found a bunch of Cheese and Chocolate fondue recipes, so I’m all set!
  
• 
  And finally Evernote! Oh the love I have for the Evernote app! It’s fabulous for taking notes (so if I want to write out a poem to go into The Hubs’ card, I’ve got an app for that. Grocery list for dinner? Yep! Really any type of note-taking you need to do, Evernote is fab to keep it all together; especially as one Evernote account can be synced with your desktops, laptops, and smartphones – essentially, any internet-enabled tech can launch Evernote so that you can view your notes whenever and wherever you need.
  

If this is the first post you’ve seen for this series, you have a chance to win the HP ENVY X2 laptop (that doubles as a tablet) AND eAIO 7520 Photosmart Printer! Complete the rafflecopter ballot box to enter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This blog post has been compensated, but please rest assured that it in no way affects the information that I’m imparting to you. I want you to have the best that’s available out there, so you won’t ever find “lemons” from me.