The 2009 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama is now just a few hours away! At 8am MST (10am EST) the program will begin, and by about 10am MST (noon EST) the oath of office and inaugural address should be underway at the United States Capitol. Two million people are expected to attend the event, with millions more following along remotely. I’ll be one of the many people using the web to keep an eye on things. Here’s how I plan to do it:
- I will of course start with Twitter. Here’s a Twitter Search query that captures most of the common terms and tags: #Inaug09, Inauguration, Obama.
- You can also follow the official Inauguration Committee Twitter account. Their official website is here, and they have profiles at Flickr and YouTube as well.
- Want to watch the inauguration live? Ustream will have it live, and they now have support for the iPhone too!
- C-SPAN will also have live inauguration video available on its website.
- Current TV is once again combining live video and Twitter for its coverage.
- NPR’s Inauguration Report 2009 looks like it’ll be a good website to see the latest photos and updates.
- Brightkite has setup a special Inauguration Day Wall to display citizen reports live from the event.
- CNN will be covering the event from top to bottom of course, but one particularly interesting piece is called The Moment. Powered by Microsoft Photosynth, they are attempting to “capture the most detailed experience of a single moment ever.”
- Following along on the iPhone? Check out this great list of resources from The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
TechCrunch has a few more resources in their Guide to the Inauguration. Lifehacker also wrote a Guide to Catching the Inauguration from Anywhere.
Make no mistake about it, Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration is a big deal. The cellphone carriers are bracing for a flood of mobile traffic, and have spent millions of dollars to upgrade their networks in Washington. Antivirus vendors are also preparing for the event – a large amount of inauguration-related spam and malware is expected. Curiously, the most popular search requests are related to Beyonce, who will be performing for Barack and Michelle’s first dance at the inauguration ball.
Need a blast from the past? Read about previous inaugurations at Wikipedia, or watch the videos.
Finally, keep an eye on Whitehouse.gov. At exactly one minute after noon (EST) the new website will launch. As the AFP’s headline states: Change.gov is coming to the White House!
Anything else I’ve missed? Let me know!
UPDATE: Here are a few more resources: National Post liveblog, CNN & Facebook (very cool), Twingly Microblog Search.
MasterMaq's Blog 
I also really like watching http://www.twitter.com/connect2canada to see Canada’s presence in Washington.
Barack Obama for me is the most charismatic president to be ever elected. He also makes great decisions, for example in the ecomomic stimulus package to counter the effects of recession.