Developed by White House New Media, (take note, there are some copycats in the Android Market) this app reports the news coming out of the nation's capital and even offers a “behind the scenes peek” at what's going on at the White House.
This little peek isn't quite your TMZ-style stories, like “what are the Obama's wearing?” or a run through of what Sasha and Malia are up to, but they are still rather fun. For instance, the app currently features photos of Obama interacting with a baby, goofing around with a video camera and walking through the rose garden.
At the same time, however, the app is also very professional looking and is updated frequently. One complaint I must express (though this isn't too unexpected) is that because these pieces are coming out of the White House, they certainly feel much more like press releases rather than actual news stories.
Laid out with an interface that resembles a lot of other popular, major news sources, users can click around between blogs, video, photos and news. This set-up makes for easy, sensible navigation.
Users can also customize White House's settings (just by clicking on the app's menu button) so that they can receive push notifications whenever there's some major news being reported, or a speech taking place in Washington. This way, you don't necessarily have to keep the app open in order to stay up-to-date on what's happening.
The app's menu has a very sharp, sleek design, but the individual articles do not. Because articles are posted by several different people, there doesn't seem to be proper formatting taking place or even one uniform style used by all.
Much of the text in the posts is clumped together rather then spaced out as paragraphs. If you're not used to reading unformatted material, this may be difficult on your eyes.