It was video-streamed. It was Twittered. It was Flickred. It was Second-Lifed. The inauguration of President Barack Obama, just before 4am this morning, was the hottest property ever on the Internet not only the biggest show on earth, but the biggest in cyberspace.
Current TV, an online outfit that specialises in running amateur videos of big events, combined with micro-blogging site Twitter to integrate the 140-word burblings of folk in the crowd and watching at home into its broadcasts.
Microsoft also demonstrated their Photosynth, MS software that morphs a series of photographs into a digital, 3-D panorama. The company was soliciting professional photographs from news outlets as well as amateur content, snapped from mobile phones and digital camera.
Redmond also scored with Silverlight, its video streaming technology, chosen by the Presidential Inaugural Committee over Adobe’s Flash for the official vidcast of the swearing-in ceremony.
UStream.tv, a streaming video site, was planning to stream its pictures direct to iPhones.
If you weren’t invited to the real hops, Second Life and Wee World were offering virtual-world copies of the 10 inaugural balls into which anyone could insert avatars of themselves. Care to dance, Michelle?
