Activating Microsoft Office 2013 with a new serial key

I had a lot of trouble activating Office 2013 Professional because the activation key I used during installation was invalid. After installation, it would ask me to activate it again. But the activation window would never allow me to enter a new serial key. It would use the same serial key I used during installation and obviously complain that it was invalid.

The workaround for this is (without having to activate over the phone) is to use command prompt. So much for Windows being a GUI OS.

Run command prompt and enter the following commands:
(The path should match to your installation directory on Windows)

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\
cscript ospp.vbs /inpkey:YourKeyHere
cscript ospp.vbs /act


The second command replaces the serial key on file with the new one you enter. The third command activates it with this new serial key.

Installing android apps on Blackberry Playbook without jailbreaking

I bought a Blackberry playbook (Don't ask me why!) and was shocked to see the lack of apps on the Blackberry App World. It practically rendered my tablet useless. Until I found that you can install Android apps on the playbook. Now, there are ways to even jailbreak your playbook and install the whole Android Play Store on the table. But, if you aren't comfortable taking such extreme measures, you can follow these simple steps to install android apps on your playbook.

You will need a Chrome browser for this. A great plus is you don't need to use the official Playbook Manager, thus allowing you to install apps on non Windows platforms as well.

1. Install the chrome plugin BB10/Playbook app manager.
2. Convert the android apps (.apk format) to a .bar format (BB app format) using this site.
3. Install the converted bar files on your playbook using the Chrome plugin.

Voila! You have your favourite android apps on your playbook now.

I installed Kindle, Quora, Google maps etc. All working fine.