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A new mobile application centering on President Barack Obama and his daily activities has launched. But it hasn't launched where you might expect.

The U.S. Government Printing Office and the National Archives' Office of the Federal Register announced today that they have launched the Presidential Documents app (PDF). The program comes with access to all of the president's executive orders, speeches, approved acts, and White House press releases, among other documents.

However, while developers are constantly delivering new applications to mobile marketplaces, like Apple's App Store and Google Play, the government agencies balked at that idea. … Read more

The Google Drive app lets you view and store files, spreadsheets, and videos, with 5GB of storage space for free, and more if you're willing to pay a subscription fee. The app only requires that you log in to your Google account to quickly access files and media stored on your Google Drive.

Upon launch, the app gives you a list of items to let you quickly get to files on My Drive, files shared with you, files you have "starred," recently opened files, and those you have made available offline. In my testing I opened and … Read more

You have many options for converting PDF files into Excel documents, depending on what software you already have, what the PDF contains, and what you expect as a finished product: everything from free Web-based tools to expensive pro tools and enterprise-level packages. Blue Label Software's PDF to Excel Converter falls somewhere in the middle, offering lots of speed and convenience, but at a significant cost, compared to the freeware.

PDF to Excel Converter's user interface is a nicely rendered variation on a common layout for tools of this type, with a tree view in a sidebar to the … Read more

Nitro PDF's PrimoPDF is a free tool that converts all kinds of files into PDFs that you can open, edit, and manage with your usual PDF application (Nitro has a free reader, too, if you don't already have one). Some free PDF converters are more like print drivers and only create documents from the Print command. But PrimoPDF also has a handy desktop icon you can drag and drop files into for rapid automatic conversion. Whichever method you prefer, PrimoPDF gives you the choice.

Clicking PrimoPDF's Drop Files icon opens the main interface, which is where you … Read more

Keyboards schmeyboards. Whatever happened to writing with stationary? Before we totally descend into a touchy-feely world of screens and buttons, at least the new can co-exist with the old through the Evernote Smart Notebook, made in collaboration with Italian paper company Moleskine.

Why would a couple of companies call a bunch of blank pages smart? … Read more

School is back in session, meaning students have folders full of syllabi, schedules, and other paperwork you're likely to reference as the semester goes on. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to carry all of it around with you all the time, without overloading your backpack?

Thanks to a handful of iOS apps, you can scan whatever paper documents you might need easy access to and store them on your iPhone, in the cloud, or on your computer with just a few taps.

I've found five apps that will help you quickly scan and organize documents. … Read more

Including images in an Office document can ensure that all relevant data is located in one spot for everyone's convenience. Maybe you need to include a schematic or blueprint diagram to help illustrate a point, or feel photos documenting a problem or demonstration could give your work a bit more power. In any case, the easy part is putting the images into the document, but what if you need to pull the images out of a file?

Sure you could use a screen grabber for small files, but what about large, high-quality images that don't fit into one … Read more

A federal judge has rejected requests by Apple and Samsung to keep portions of sensitive company documents from being made public during their patent battle.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh for the Northern District of California ruled today that "it appears that the parties have overdesignated confidential documents and are seeking to seal information that is not truly sealable," according to a Reuters report. "Only documents of exceptionally sensitive information that truly deserve protection will be allowed to be redacted or kept from the public."

Koh gave each company one week to refile their requests. … Read more

The Texas Attorney General seems unhappy with Google. What started as an antitrust lawsuit two years ago has now morphed into an investigation into the Web giant's alleged attempts to withhold documents from the Lone Star State.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a civil lawsuit against Google this week alleging that the search engine has redacted or refused to turn over documentation based on false attorney-client privilege, according to AllThingsD. Supposedly, Google has refused to hand over 14,500 documents claiming attorney-client privilege. Abbott said some of these documents are indeed protected, however, many others are not.

Here'… Read more