White House Announces iPhone, iPod Application

slfisher 0 388 Views

Interested in following the Obama presidency?

There's an app for that.

Timed for the State of the Union speech next week, TheWhiteHouse is a free application for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch that lets users stream video, browse photos, and read text from President Barack Obama's White House.

According to the , this is just the first step for the WhiteHouse.gov mobile platform. "In the coming weeks, we’ll also launch , a mobile-ready version of WhiteHouse.gov that is optimized for any internet-enabled mobile device, including many other phones," the blog entry said.

Dani AI

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Good call, — a few follow-ups and practical notes that readers arriving years later may find useful.

The White House published the iOS app as an official project and later made the source public on GitHub. The repository (WhiteHouse/wh-app-ios) documents that the app is a feed-driven client (RSS), includes push-notification support via Urban Airship, and uses Google Analytics; the README also explains build requirements and licensing (MIT; notes about U.S. government work). This makes the repo a handy reference if someone wants to inspect how the official client worked or adapt the approach. WhiteHouse/wh-app-ios. (github.com)

A couple of practical tips for end users: verify the app publisher in the App Store (screenshots, developer page and price can help distinguish the official release from lookalikes), and prefer a reliable Wi‑Fi connection for live streams to avoid buffering or mobile-data overage. Contemporary coverage of the launch highlighted the live-streaming feature and warned to check the app name before downloading. TechCrunch coverage — NextGov coverage. (techcrunch.com)

For developers or researchers: the GitHub repo contains submodule/setup notes (Facebook SDK, Nimbus, SVPullToRefresh) and explicit instructions for initializing Urban Airship and feed parsing — useful if building a similar government or feed-based app. Note the official repository was archived (read-only) in 2022, so check forks or the App Store for any maintained successors before relying on it. WhiteHouse/wh-app-ios. (github.com)

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