How to Embed Just a Portion of a YouTube Video

How do you embed just that green segment of a YouTube video?

Sometimes you may want to embed just a portion of a YouTube video in your web pages.
For instance, you are embedding a movie from YouTube but want the viewer to focus of one particular scene that begins at ‘x’ seconds and ends at ‘y’ seconds. When the scene has finished, the embedded clip should stop playing irrespective of the length of the video.
Well, here are two simple ways to help you embed a part of any YouTube video:

Case A: Embed YouTube Video with Start Time

This is a scenario where you specify a start time for the embedded video and let it play through the end. Here you can use the standard embed code and append the start time parameter to the YouTube URL as illustrated in the following example:

<iframe width="500" height="300" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen
   src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID#t=1234s"></iframe>

Replace VIDEO_ID with the actual ID of your YouTube video and replace 1234s with the start time (in seconds). For instance, if you want the video to start playback at the 03:24 (mm:ss) mark, you’ll specify the time as t=204s (60*3 + 24).

Case B: Embed YouTube Video with Start & End Time

The following YouTube video from an Apple event is over an hour long but I have only embedded the most interesting 2-minute segment (22:10 – 24:26) where Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone.
Hit the play button inside the embedded player for a quick demo.
The standard YouTube embed code doesn’t support the end time parameter but we can make use of the YouTube JavaScript API to embed a part of any YouTube video. Without boring you with the technical details, here’s your new embed code:

1. <div videoID="t2MOwQ089eQ" startTime="1330" endTime="1466" height="400" width="400" 
2.  id="youtube-player"></div>
4. <script src="http://labnol.googlecode.com/files/youtube-embed.js"></script>

You just have to replace the Video ID, the start time (in seconds), the end time (in seconds), the height of the player (in pixels) and the width in the <DIV> tag as per your needs. See this annotated source code to learn how the playback is controlled via the YouTube API.
Also, if you are planning to use this embed code on a popular site, please host the youtube-embed.js file on your own server as googlecode.com may offer limited bandwidth.

Download Web Pages as PDFs with Chrome for iOS

Just like the desktop version of Chrome, you can now the Google Chrome browser on your iPad or iPhone to download web pages as PDF files without requiring a separate app. The menu options aren’t very intuitive though so here’s a quick walk-through.

Save web pages as PDFs with Chrome on your iPad and iPhone

Print Web Pages as PDFs with Chrome

While you are inside Google Chrome, tap the Menu button and then choose the Print option. Choose Google Cloud Print and you’ll see a list of all your Android and iOS devices that also have Chrome installed on them. Choose the Save to Google Drive option instead and a PDF version of the current web page will instantly get saved to your Google Drive.
Alternatively, you can pick any of your other Android /iOS devices under the Google Cloud Print menu and the PDF file will remotely download to that device. You’ll have to open Chrome on that other device to access the PDF file.
If the PDF printing option isn’t working on your iOS device, make sure that you are signed-in with your Google Account and that Chrome to Mobile option is enabled. This is available under Menu -> Settings -> Google Account (your email address) -> Chrome to Mobile.
One more thing. It is also possible to save web pages as PDFs directly on your iOS device, bypassing Google Drive, but you can’t export that file into other PDF reading apps like iBooks or even your Mail application.
Chrome internally uses the Quartz API of Apple to generate PDF files – the page layout is well preserved but the hyperlinks won’t work inside the PDF.

When you cannot open Google or Gmail in Chrome, try this simple fix

Ever since I upgraded to the latest version of Google Chrome, I keep getting “socket” errors when trying to open Google, Gmail or any other website under the google.com domain.
This isn’t as issue with my Internet connection as I can easily access the Google websites from IE and Firefox but they simply refuse to load inside Chrome with the following error:

Error 15 (net::ERR_SOCKET_NOT_CONNECTED): Unknown error.
The problem gets resolved when the computer is restarted but that’s just a temporary solution as the errors keep coming back. It turns out that this is a known issue in Google Chrome and has also been experienced by dozens of Google users on Twitter.

Fix Socket Errors in Google Chrome

While we wait for the Chrome team to fix the issue, the irony is that it only seems to affect Google websites, there’s one simple step you can perform to get rid of the socket errors without having to restart the computer.
Open Google Chrome and type chrome://net-internals in the address bar (omni box). Switch to the Sockets tab and choose Flush Socket Pools. Now open Gmail or Google.com in Chrome and the site should open without problems.

A Podcast Directory Integrated with Dropbox and Google Drive

My latest project, Podcast Gallery is now live. It is an online directory of audio and video podcasts that you can watch /listen in the browser without requiring any software or apps.
Please watch this YouTube video for a quick introduction.
The show pages are integrated with Dropbox and Google Drive and thus you can send your favorite podcast episodes to your online drive directly via the cloud. For instance, if you are on a desktop, you can start a download request and the podcast will instantly become available on your mobile phone (or vice-versa).
The other feature of Podcast Gallery is Collections. You can sign-in with your Facebook or Twitter accounts and add your favorite podcast shows to a collection. These collections have a unique web URL that you can share with friends  or you can download the list as an OPML file. This will help you importing your favorite podcasts into any RSS Reader or another podcasting app.
Podcast Gallery uses the HTML5 media player and hence the audio /video files would play inline without requiring Flash or other plugins.
You can follow the gallery on Twitter, Facebook or through RSS Feeds.
Internally, the site is built on top of WordPress and the podcast data is sourced from iTunes API and the Google Feeds API. The integration with Dropbox and Google Drive is done with the help of filepicker.io while the media players are powered by the MediaElement.js library. The icon fonts are courtesy the Entypo and Font Awesome libraries.

Adobe Media Player for Watching Podcasts and FLV Videos

Adobe Media Player, a desktop media player that lets you play Flash Videos (flv), podcasts and QuickTime movies, just got better.
 

Adobe today posted a new build of Adobe Media Player on Adobe Labs – the UI is more or less the same but Adobe Media player can now play videos that are encoded using H.264 codec.
You would need Adobe AIR to install Adobe Media Player. And though you can watch videos that are already saved on your desktop, the current build of AMP won’t let you add new RSS feeds.
Updated: For subscribing to your favorite video podcasts inside Adobe Media Player, go to “My Favorites” and click the “Add RSS Feed” link at the bottom. Thanks Brian.
Get Adobe Media Player [Available for Win and Mac]

How to Prevent People from Stealing your Wi-Fi Network

The data LED of your wireless router is constantly blinking and none of the family members are using the Internet at home. This might indicate that someone outside – probably your neighbors – are surfing the web using your Wireless (Wi-Fi) network.
Are neighbors using your Wi-Fi network?
If you would like to confirm whether an outsider is using your wireless home network, here’s a trick. First enter the router’s IP address in the browser’s address bar – here’s how to find the router’s IP Address. Then open the DHCP Client Table (it is under Status – > Local Network – > DHCP Server for Linksys routers). This shows a list of all devices connected to your wireless network including those of strangers.

How to Prevent Wi-Fi Theft

You can’t block the Wi-Fi signals from reaching your neighbor’s house but there are several things you may do to prevent them from piggybacking on your wireless network. Some of the well-known techniques to secure your Wireless network include:

1. Setup a password for your Wi-Fi network – Open your router’s admin dashboard and set the wireless security mode to either WPA, WPA2 or WEP (use WPA2-mixed if possible). Now people would have to know the password before they can join your Wi-Fi network.
2. Use MAC Address Filtering – Your laptop computer, mobile phone, tablet and all other gadgets have a unique MAC address. Go to your router’s dashboard and under the Wireless Mac Filter section, add the MAC addresses of all your known devices so that only whitelisted devices can access your wireless Internet.

Discourage Neighbors from using your Wireless Network

Most people in the neighborhood, who are connecting to your Wi-Fi network without permission, could be doing so unintentionally just because their computer showed them that an open wireless network in available in that area.

Mikko Hypponen has a brilliant idea to discourage such people from connecting to your wireless network.
You can rename your wireless network name, also known as SSIDs to something scary – like c:\virus.exe - and your neighbors are less likely to connect to your Wi-Fi network ever again. Other suggestions for scary SSID names include Police Van and Network Service Unavailable.
To change the SSID of your wireless router, log in to your router’s admin console and rename the network under Basic Wireless setting.

[*] Find the MAC Address of your devices

If you type “ipconfig /all” at the command prompt, you can easily find the MAC address of your computer’s network card – just look for the string “Physical Address.” The Wi-Fi Mac address of mobile devices is often listed on their Settings page.
The MAC Addresses are also listed inside the DHCP Client Table of your router.

Use any YouTube Video as your Page Background

You are probably using a single static image as the background for your website but it may offer a slightly more richer experience if you could consider placing moving images, like an animation or a self-playing video clip, in the background of your web pages.
The Bing homepage frequently uses video backgrounds, like those penguins jumping out of an ice hole one after another, and so can you on your own website.
There are several approaches here:

• Bing uses the standard HTML5 <video> tags to serve videos on the homepage. The embedded video has a fixed size and it doesn’t resize itself with the browser.
• There are ready-to-use jQuery plugins, Tubular and BigVideo.js for example, that let you easily use any video, or a series of videos, as page backgrounds.
• The other more simple approach, as you can see in this demo, uses HTML and CSS tags (no JavaScript) to help you place any YouTube video in the page background.

YouTube Video Backgrounds

To get started, simply paste the code below near the opening <body> tag of your web template. You should also replace the ID with the actual video ID of the YouTube video that you would like to use in the background.

<div style="position: fixed; z-index: -99; width: 100%; height: 100%">
  <iframe frameborder="0" height="100%" width="100%" 
    src="https://youtube.com/embed/ID?autoplay=1&controls=0&showinfo=0&autohide=1">
  </iframe>
</div>
 
// Replace ID with the actual ID of your YouTube video

Internally, we are using YouTube’s IFRAME tags to embed that video such that it occupies the entire page (both width and height are set to 100%). Also, the z-index is set to negative so the YouTube video layer will appear several levels below the main content of your page.
The downside is that your background video won’t work on mobile devices and it is not possible to mute the sound of a video without using JavaScript.

Bonus Tip: Embed Background Music with YouTube

Remember the Geocities era when websites would automatically play background music as soon as you opened them much to the embarrassment of office workers. They mostly used raw audio files, like MP3, WAV or even the MIDI format, to embed music but you can even use any of your favorite YouTube tracks for embedding background audio.
The trick is that you embed a regular YouTube video (with autoplay=1) and set the height & width of the video player to zero so it stays invisible. This can be achieved with a single line of code which you can add anywhere on your web page.

<embed height="0" width="0" 
  src="http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/VIDEO_ID&autoplay=1&loop=1" />

How to Fake your Location in Google Chrome

Sometimes websites may request access to your location so that they can serve more relevant information. For instance, if you are looking for a gas station, a maps website may use your current geographic location to display stations that are near your place.

Google Chrome will only share your location if you click Allow.

How Browsers Determine your Location

Earlier, websites would use the IP address to determine your approximate location but with the HTML5 Geolocation API, web browsers can more accurately detect your location using data from GPS, Wi-Fi networks, cell towers, Bluetooth and the computer’s IP address. If you agree to share your location, the browser will send these details to Google Location Services for estimating your location which is then shared with the requesting website.
To give you an example, open the Where am I app in your browser, allow it to use your location information and the app should be able to display your latitude and longitude coordinates (it is more accurate on mobile browsers as those devices have built-in GPS).

Fake your Geolocation Coordinates

When you happen to visit a location-aware website, the browser will always ask for a confirmation before sharing your location. If you aren’t keen to share your geographic coordinates, you can always deny that request or, if you are using Google Chrome, you can even send a fake location to the website.
Here’s how. Press F12 (or Ctrl + Shift + I) in Google Chrome to open the Developer Tools. Click the Settings icon in the lower right corner and switch to the Overrides tab (see the next screenshot). Now you can specify the exact latitude and longitude coordinates* that you want to share with that website.
[*] You can use the Postal Address finder to know the latitude and location of a place.Make sure that the “Override Geolocation” setting is checked and then refresh the page to send that fake location. And this is obviously a useful feature for web developers who would like to test their geolocation-enabled apps from the same location.

Create Temporary Email Addresses inside Hotmail

A temporary email address is handy in situations where you don’t want to share your primary email address because of the risk of spam. Now there are quite a few services on the web, Mailinator and 10MinuteMail for example, that offer temporary email addresses for free but with certain limitations.
For example, these services provide receive-only inboxes so you can’t send email to someone using your temporary address. Second, these addresses auto-expire after a certain time and then you may have to generate a new one. Finally, we don’t have much of a clue about the companies that run these services and their privacy policies.
If you have been looking for a more reliable temporary email service but without any limitations, it’s time to log in to your Hotmail account.
Microsoft has added a new feature in Windows Live Hotmail that will let you create aliases for your main email address and the good part is that all these aliases can be managed though the same Inbox. Google Apps also supports email aliases but not Gmail.

I really like the way they have implemented aliases in Hotmail (see the video above). All incoming email for an alias gets stored in a separate folder, outside your main Inbox, and if you are getting too much spam for an alias, simply delete it from your account.
You may associate up to five different aliases with your Hotmail account.
Technically, this is quite similar to creating a new Gmail account that auto-forwards to your main Inbox and then you set up a filter for routing those messages. However, for people who aren’t that technically inclined, Hotmail’s approach is a winner.

Get an Email Alert (with Picture) When Someone Tries to Log into your Computer

You have a feeling that someone else used your computer (or at least made an attempt to login) while you were out for a quick coffee break. Maybe that colleague with whom you share the cubicle knows your password or he made a few guesses before finally giving up.
How do you get notified when such an attempt is made to intrude into your computer?

Email alert with a webcam picture of the intruder.

A new website (made in Turkey) called MouseLock.co may have a simple solution here. They will send you an email alert as well as a picture of the intruder as soon as someone tries to use your computer.Here’s how Mouse Lock works.
You sign-in with your Google Account (they’ll send the alert to your Gmail address) and then select a secret pin on the screen. Next, put your mouse cursor in a designated area on the Mouse Lock website and leave the machine.
Now when someone moves the mouse, they will also have to enter the original pin. If they fail to do that in the first few seconds, Mouse Lock will send you an email and, if the computer has a webcam, it will use that to also snap a picture of the intruder.
Mouse Lock won’t prevent the intrusion but will at least notify you the minute it happens. And best of all, this a web app and thus requires no installation.
Internally, the site uses jQuery (mouseLeaveEvent) to detect mouse movements while the webcam photographs are captured using the getUserMedia() API currently supported in Chrome and Firefox. The alerts, possibly due to a bug, are triggered even when any of the keys are pressed and that makes it a little less useful since there’s no way to lock the computer after setting up the monitor.

Quickly Open Google Cached Pages in Chrome

How to access the cached version of any web page in Google.

Google Cache is among the most useful features of Google Web Search.
If a website is down or is taking too much time to respond, you can quickly retrieve the cached copy of that page from Google servers. The cache can also be serve as a proxy server (sort of) allowing you to view pages that may be inaccessible from your current location.
The “Cached” link had a prominent place in Google search results but with Instant Previews, the Cached links become visible only when you hover the mouse over a search result (see screenshot above).

How to Open Google Cached Pages

If you wish to access a cached version of a web page, go to google.com and type cache:<web address> in the search box. When Google sees that special “cache” operator in the query, it automatically transfers you to the cached copy of that page.
And if you are using Google Chrome, just type “cache:” before the URL in Chrome’s address bar and it goes straight to the cached version.

Get Reminders to Follow-up your Starred E-mails in Gmail

If an important email arrives in your Gmail mailbox and you are unable to respond right away, you “Star” that message. These Stars (or Flags in Outlook) help us in remembering messages that need to be acted upon later else they are likely to get lost in the sea of incoming emails.

The problem is, unless you are regularly pruning the list, your Starred folder in Gmail may become just another dumping ground for emails that require follow-up.

Follow-up your Pending E-mails in Gmail

What I have done is created an email newsletter that arrives every morning and contains a list of 10 messages, picked randomly from the entire pool of messages that are marked with a star in Gmail.

This daily email works like a gentle nudge to act and also alerts me of messages that have been pending for too long. Here’s how you can set up one for your own Gmail account.

1. Copy this Google Sheet to your Google Drive.
2. Open the sheet and a new Gmail option will appear in the menu bar. Choose Initialize and grant access.
3. Now choose Gmail -> Install to activate the script that will send you a daily newsletter. Close the Google sheet.

If you wish to stop receiving the email reminder anytime, open the same Google Sheet and choose Uninstall from the Gmail menu.

Also, the Google Script will send you a summary of 10 messages from your Starred folder. You can however change the values of cell D5 and D7 in the sheet to monitor another label or change the count of messages that should be included in your daily digest.

How to Continuously Monitor your Internet Connection

The internet connection has been flaky for the past few days. It works fine for 10-15 minutes, breaks for about a minute and the connection is then automatically restored. This erratic on/off cycle repeats itself throughout the day.

It is most likely an ISP issue as the modem, the router, the DNS server, and the network connections seem perfect. Even power cycling the hardware failed to fix the problem.

While the ISP resolves the issue, I have to continuously monitor the Internet connection as certain actions – like submitting web forms – would fail if initiated while the computer is offline. Luckily, there isn’t a need to download another utility as the included ping command can itself help monitor the downtime.

Ping to Monitor your Internet Connection

Go to Start -> Run and type “ping -t 8.8.8.8″ without the quotes. The “-t” switch is important as it means that the ping command will run forever unless stopped manually by hitting Ctrl + C. (8.8.8.8 is Google’s DNS Server)

The output of the ping command, as illustrated in the above screenshot, shows the live status of your Internet connection. If the status reads as “reply from 8.8.8.8,” the machine is online and in all other cases, the Internet connection is down.

How to Communicate your Displeasure with Neighbours using Wi-Fi

You want to maintain amicable relations with your neighbors but their loud music has become too annoying and distracting. What can a good way to communicate your displeasure and get them to turn down the volume?

Got noisy neighbors? Express your displeasure over WiFi.

@Westendproducer shares a clever idea on Twitter.

Your wireless network has a name (or SSID) that will show up on your neighbour’s computer and mobile phone. You can put the complaint message in your Wi-Fi name and your neighbours may see it when their device is scanning for available wireless names to connect to the Internet.

And unless you are the only house in that area with a router, your neighbours are less likely to figure out who is showing them that message. This is much like leaving a sticky note on your neighbour’s door anonymously.

Wireless names can also be used to share your contact information with neighbours.

Automatically Delete Older Messages in Gmail with Auto Purge

The Trash and the Spam folders in your Gmail have a unique auto-purge property and old email messages belonging to either of these labels are automatically deleted after a fixed period of time (30 days to be precise).

Get rid of unwanted and older email messages with auto-purge in Gmail.

Auto-purging can help keep your mailbox lean and tidy.

For instance, if you have created a rule in Gmail that archives all your newsletter subscriptions to a particular label, these unwanted messages will live forever until you manually purge them. With auto-purging enabled, the older mails of a label are automatically removed from your mailbox.

How to Enable Auto-Purging in Gmail

You can’t enable auto-purging in Gmail for any particular label but there’s a simple Google Script that will bring this missing functionality to your Gmail. The script will basically monitor messages belonging to a particular folder /label in Gmail and purge those that have exceed the retention time.

Here’s how you can get auto-purge to work inside your Gmail:

1. Open Google Script and choose File -> Make a copy to copy it into your Google Drive.
2. Set the value of GMAIL_LABEL to the label that you wish to auto-purge and PURGE_AFTER are the number of days for which you to retain a message in Gmail.
3. Go to Run -> Initialize and grant the necessary permissions. This is your personal script and nobody else will ever have access to your data.
4. Go to Run -> Install to install the auto-purge script.

That’s it. Exit the Google Script and it will continuously monitor that particular Gmail label in the background. If you need to disable auto-purging later, just open the same script in your Google Drive and choose Run -> Uninstall.

26 Interesting Facts about The Internet: you never found

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Easily Capture Screenshots in Google Earth for Android

The Google Earth app for Android includes a handy screen capture feature that allows you to capture and share screenshot images of the current view inside Earth with a click. You may capture screenshots of aerial imagery as well as 3D buildings.

You may wonder why would anyone need this when Android itself include screen-capture capabilities? Well, compare these two images.

This screenshot was captured using Google Earth – clutter free image.

This screenshot of Google Earth was captured with Android

The big advantage with Google Earth’s built-in screen capture feature is that it adds none of the on-screen clutter to your screenshot.

How to take Screenshots in Google Earth

To get started, navigate to any location inside Google Earth and click the More menu in the upper-right corner. Now choose the Share option from the drop-down and Google Earth will automatically take a screenshot image of the current view.

You can then directly save that screenshot to Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook or any other application that is part of the system-wide Share menu.

The screen-capture feature is not available inside the Google Maps app for Android but you can use another app called Skitch to capture clean screenshots of your Google Maps.

Open the Skitch app and choose Draw on Map. Now search for a location on Google Maps and tap the “tick” symbol to save a screenshot of the current view.

Keep your Google Contacts Up-to-date with a Google Script

You have several incomplete entries in your Google Contacts. Some entries are missing phone numbers, others don’t have any mailing address associated with them while in the case of close friends and family members, you don’t even have a record of their birthdays.

How do you get this missing information from contacts and complete your address book?

You can always send them an email or make a phone call and fill-in the missing details manually or there’s a new and better alternative – you can ask your contacts to directly update their own records in your Google Contacts.

Ask Friends to Update your Google Contacts

It works something like this. Your selected contacts are sent a unique URL that points to a web form. They can fill-in the missing data, press the Submit button and all that information is directly added to your Google Contacts. Simple.

To get started, go to your Google Contacts and create a new group (let’s call it Personal). Now put one or more contacts into this new group – all these group members will get an automatic email from you requesting them to update their own records in Google Contacts.

Next open this Google Script* and follow these steps:

1. Choose File -> Make a Copy to create a copy of the script into your own Google Drive.
2. Update the values of NAME and GROUP variables with the actual values.
3. Go to File -> Manage Versions and Save a new version.
4. Go to Publish -> Deploy as Web App, choose “Anyone, even Anonymous” under “Who can access the app” and click the Deploy button.
5. Go to Run -> Initialize to authorize the script. Choose Run -> Initialize to run the script.

[*] If you have trouble accessing the Google script, please download code.zip and copy-paste the content of the three files into script.google.com.

That’s it. All your contacts who are part of that particular Google Contacts group will now receive an email from you (screenshot A). When any of these contacts update their details through the form (screenshot B), you will be notified of the change via email.

Screenshot A: Your friend gets an email requesting them to update their contact information.

Screenshot B: They can fill the form and their details are added directly into your Google Contacts.

The project is created using Google Scripts and the entire source code is available online. If you ever wish to disable the Google Contacts form, open the same Google Script in your Google Drive and unpublish the web app (under Publish -> Deploy as web app).

Also, this version of the project request essential contact details like Mailing Address, Mobile Number, Skype ID, etc. but you can easily extend the script /web form to include additional fields like Anniversary date, Company name and so on.

Find the Top Tourist Attractions of a City with Google

If you are travelling to a new city, you can use Google to quickly discover all the tourist attractions and other interesting places to visit in and around that city. This includes historical monuments, museums, gardens, and other places popular among tourists.

The syntax for your Google query should be Things to do in City. You may also use this query with a country – like Things to do in India – and Google will offer you a visual list of the top places to see in that country. It works for continents too.

You may try a search for Agra, Zurich, Australia and Asia. Thanks John Mueller for the tip.

Where to Download Microsoft Office 2013?

Microsoft is expected to release a new version of Office, called Microsoft Office 2013 (or Office 15) early next year. The new Office, the release version of which is already available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, sports a minimalist interface and, among other features, is very tightly integrated with SkyDrive.

If you aren’t an MSDN/Technet subscriber, you can still download and install Microsoft Office 2013 as long as your computer is running Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Where can I download Microsoft Office 2013

Option A: You can go to office.com/preview and download the full-featured edition of Office 2013 that includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Microsoft Access (no Visio here). You can install this version on up to 5 PCs using your Microsoft account.

This is actually Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium Preview and what’s unique here is that you can get Office running on your computer within minutes of hitting the install button. This uses Microsoft’s Click-To-Run installation technology – you just have to download a 500KB installer and it “streams” the Microsoft Office applications to your computer.

The downside is that you have to install the entire Office package and second, this isn’t the final release of Office but a “preview” edition (version 15.0.4128.1025).

Option B: The other option is that you download the Microsoft Office 2013 installer from the Technet website (all you need is a Windows Live ID). Unlike the preview edition of Office, this one is the “final” Office Professional Plus 2013 release (version 15.0.4433.1506) that will continue to work for 60 days from the date of installation.

In order to install this version of Office, you’ll be required to download the full MSI installer (666 MB, OfficeProfessionalPlus_x86_en-us.img) but the advantage is that you can choose which Office programs should be installed on the computer.

Which Microsoft Office 2013 edition should I download?

Microsoft Office 2013 Pro is available as a 60-day trial while there’s no exact expiry date fixed for Office 365 Preview. Microsoft says that Office Preview will expire approximately 60 days after Office 2013 becomes available in that market. You will thus have more time to play with Office 2013 with the preview release.

Office 365 Preview can be installed alongside an older copy of Microsoft Office whereas in the case of Office 2013 Professional, it will override your existing installation.

One more thing. The Office 2013 preview release streams very quickly (click to run) and you don’t even have to be an administrator of your computer to install it. That’s not the case with Office 2013 Pro.

Microsoft hasn’t specified an exact release date for Microsoft Office 2013 but if you buy a licence of Microsoft Office 2010 now, you will get a free upgrade to Office 2013.