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Opinion: The White House? Now, there’s an app for that

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President Obama has garnered copious ‘props’ and ‘daps’ from the young, hip technology community. Thanks in no small part to his administration’s Web 2.0-friendly WhiteHouse.gov, accompanied by a blog and live video streams.

The White House (or the White Hizzle, as the kids are maybe calling it these days) got on another cool tech bandwagon this week with the launch of an official iPhone application.

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The White House App can be downloaded on iTunes or through the App Store on an iPhone or iPod Touch. The software provides mobile users a direct portal to the White House Blog and the various multimedia content it puts online.

Also contained within the app is a section for live-streaming video. In a statement, the White House took the opportunity to promote the president’s State of the Union speech on Jan. 27. Now no excuse to miss the event. Which, btw, The Ticket will be live-blogging right here.

IPhone apps are sweet, but as we know, Obama is a BlackBerry user. Addressing that crowd, the White House statement says a mobile-optimized version of the website, available to any Internet-enabled smart phone, will be unveiled at Mobile.WhiteHouse.gov ‘in the coming weeks.’

Why start with the iPhone if the commander-in-chief rocks a CrackBerry, as BB addicts call it?

In a small, closed-door news conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, Aneesh Chopra, Obama’s chief technology officer, said, while fidgeting with the stopwatch on his iPhone, ‘I mean, look at the iPhone: 5,000% growth in demand.’

-- Mark Milian

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