News sites gear up for inauguration coverage

This year’s presidential inauguration is likely to be a milestone in how watch and interact with the event. With CNN set to stream the ceremony live and allow Facebook users to interact in real-time, its clear the 2008 inauguration will be high-tech.

The new sites, meanwhile, have started to pull out their special coverage.

CNN has a special section under its CNNPolitics.com brand for the coverage, which includes plenty of video-based options and interactivity.

MSNBC, meanwhile, has created a special section similar to the Decision 2008 Dashboard used in the weeks leading up to the election. The innovative design combines video, polls, news and more content into a concise layout.

MSNBC also has an interactive inauguration speech feature that allows users to search through addresses from the past by keyword or browse transcripts and then click on a particular word to see the video from that point.

FoxNews.com, however, didn’t have an election center online that we could find around 4 p.m. central time Monday. There were some teases to Geraldo Rivera’s behind-the-scenes blog as well as banner ads promoting on-air coverage, however.

ABCNews.com has dubbed its coverage “President44” with an interactive video and text-based news site. The page also include historic video but doesn’t proide the level of grainularity that MSNBC.com does. That said, ABCNews.com does a better job of presenting hard-hitting news items such as the issues facing Obama.

CBSNews.com offers up a similar selection of news and historic coverage and also has a “video channel” set up just for its clips. CBSNews.com also has a prominent countdown to the event.