The outage was announced at 1:30 p.m. during a regular briefing at which Press Secretary Robert Gibbs apologized to reporters for the administration's failure to answer e-mails, reports say.

White House e-mails rely on an server that apparently crashed, but the administration didn't explain the exact cause of the outage.

The e-mail blackout is a little embarrassing to the new president, whose campaign embraced and made masterful use of it to raise funds, organize volunteers and disseminate information. Obama himself is . And he has committed to having traceable e-mails so he doesn't wind up like his predecessor George W. Bush, whose administration lost thousands of them.

But today Obama's staff was reduced to using ancient technologies such as photocopiers. Rather than send attachments containing executive orders Obama signed, the press staff distributed printouts.

Bloggers were having fun with the predicament.