Yesterday, at a townhall meeting with Chinese students in Shaghai, President Obama had much praise for the Internet and its role in democracy, politics and society. Unfortunately, he prefaced his remarks with this statement:

"Let me say that I have never used Twitter. I noticed that young people -- they're very busy with all these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone."

Meet WhipCast, the newly public BlackBerry application that House Republicans, led by Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia and Kevin McCarthy of California, are showing around the Hill. Politico's Mike Allen has the story. WhipCast is meant to give the 177 Republicans serving in the House and their staffers a way to keep up with the news on the House floor, track legislation, have mobile access to congressional reports, and even, says McCarthy, provide a laugh or two with a week's end "Friday funny." The idea has merit. Here's what Cantor's office says WhipCast offers both House Republicans and the interested public who might want to keep tabs on House action:

All Media On-the-Go Featuring documents, audio, image, and video updates the WhipCast delivers an impressive array of rich media content.

Expansive Updates The WhipCast features talking points, policy discussions, polling information, floor schedule updates, and more.

Reliable Resource The WhipCast will automatically update with the latest information alerts as they are made available each day -- all without cluttering your email inbox.

Offline Access If you install an optional memory card with your BlackBerry, you will have access to all the latest information - even when a cell network or wifi connection is not available. So, the next time you board a flight - you will still have all the latest information right at your fingertips.

We're hearing reports of a somewhat buggy implementation, like a "Bill Facts" section that is entirely devoid of any actual content. That's not ideal for the House GOP, as they attempt to make the case that they offer a sensible alternative to Democratic leadership. (Along those lines, a senior Democratic aide jokes that Democratic staffers are asking each other why the GOP is "spending time on an app instead of producing the healthcare bill that they'd promised 134 days ago.") [UPDATE] Matt Lira, director of new media in the GOP Whip's office, notes that the app is "empty" upon installation to keep the download clean and speedy, and the app will be populated with content as the Whip's office sends it out. That said, says Lira, they're open to doing things different should their users prefer it another way. [END UPDATE] This is the fourth iteration of the WhipCast software in seven months, says Politico, but it does seem like there are still some technical kinks to be worked out.

And while making the app public is a respectable bid at openness, the external audience for something like the WhipCast application is probably some small fraction of the the audience for news, like this post, about WhipCast.

That said, as tool for the House Republican caucus, WhipCast has a lot going for it. Mobile technologies like cell phones and Blackberrys are particularly well suited to meet many of the challenges that those in Congress face everyday, namely having to be in three places at once, having limited access to information, and needing the ability to quickly up to speed on a wide variety of topics while on the go. If WhipCast can get the kinks worked out -- and if folks in and out of the House actually find it useful and intuitive enough to actually use it -- the app could prove itself a useful tool for House Republicans as they attempt to organize their minority.

Technology that slips right into your pocket makes it trivial for legislators and lobbyists to be in constant, instantaneous contact. But when it comes to the practice of politics, can ubiquitous connectivity be too much of a good thing?

The latest worry for open government advocates: so-called PIN messaging. It's something you do with a BlackBerry. Each and every one of those devices has a unique eight-digit identification number, known only to the BlackBerry's owner. But share that PIN number with a contact, and it's a direct and immediate Blackberry-to-Blackberry connection. Think of it as mainlining personal communications...

Bush Administration-era emails can stay "lost" for now, according to a new ruling by a federal appeals court, reports the AP.

The critical point in the court's decision is that the White House Office of Administration responsible for keeping tabs on White House emails is an administrative office, not a government "agency." Thus, it's not subject to Freedom of Information Act disclosure requirements.

As we mentioned yesterday, the Obama Administration is itself wrestling with how it will keep track of White House emails. The challenge of applying good government principles to a Blackberrying presidency is that the open flow of digital communication (a good thing, in many people's eyes) can put a great deal of strain on record-keeping aimed at transparency and accountability (also a good thing, in the view of many).

The Obama Administration has been backing the idea that some Bush White House email records needn't be disclosed.

One interesting twist for us here: the White House office responsible for handling the Bush e-mail case is the very same office responsible for overseeing how the Obama White House meets disclosure and record-keeping requirements as it experiments on the web with Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and the like. There are only so many hours in the day, even at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Time spent dealing with the Bush email case is, potentially, time not available to help the new presidency determine how to engage online.

(The photo above, by White House photographer Pete Souza, is of Blackberrys and other phones taken from members of Congress during a closed briefing at the White House.)

The accepted storyline on President Obama's souped-up hot rod of a super-secure executive branch Blackberry runs like this: Presidents too often exist in a bubble, insulated from real people and the world outside the sturdy White House gates. There's some truth to that, of course, but much of that isolation has tended to be self-inflicted rather than mandated by statute.

While it will undoubtedly help him keep his connection with non-governmental friends and ideas, the Obama Blackberry also has another important function that I'm pretty sure our new President is well aware of: it's an important symbol of access and permission.

• One of the two executive orders signed by Barack Obama in his first full day in office pledged to shift governing presumptions about secrecy in the executive branch. With the swipe of a pen, Obama hopes to do away with the federal government's knee-jerk compulsion to squirrel away information...
• New White House staffers find themselves time-traveled back about, oh, a decade when they walk through 1600 Pennsylvania's gates...
• The latest in the on-going "will he or won't he" saga involving Obama's beloved Blackberry...
• And more.

FOX 5 of Washington D.C. went to the McCain/Palin campaign fire sale in Arlington, Virginia on Thursday and purchased a couple of dead Blackberries. After powering them up with new batteries, the reporters found that normal security protocols that should have been adhered to by the campaign to remove data from the devices had been glossed over. They found them full of confidential campaign contact information as well as some e-mail.

Letting Us in to the White House; Conventional Wisdom Turns Against CEOs as CTO; Busting Out of the "Finest Prison in the World;" Building the Post-Obama Movement; NASA's Filling CIO Position at the Speed of Light; How Did Times Readers Do in Their Cabinet Bets?; and a good deal more.

Here's a tale of two radically different uses of technology on Capitol Hill: the first to keep all but the most-connected people out, and the second to let the rest of us in. In the first case, we have Members of Congress who are crack-berry addicts staying in permanent contact with their cronies and donors, even on the floor where lobbyists are supposedly banned. And in the second case, we have a Republican Congressman who is Twittering from what he calls the "deepest and darkest hole" in Congress.