Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden are due to be sworn in and deliver inauguration speeches next Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Both events will be streamed live on the PIC site using Silverlight, a cross-browser technology for delivering live and on-demand video over the Web.

The PIC will also stream video of an event with Obama and Biden in Baltimore on Saturday as part of their "Whistle Stop Tour," which will take them from Philadelphia to Washington for the inaugural ceremony and celebrations.

Obama was elected on Nov. 4 as the first African-American U.S. president, giving Tuesday's inauguration particular historical significance.

IStreamPlanet, an online content-delivery company in Las Vegas, Nevada, is working with Microsoft to stream the event, Microsoft said.

The inaugural event is the latest high-profile use of Silverlight, which was first released in April 2007 as a rival to Adobe Flash. The technology comprises a tool for developing and designing Internet applications and a media player for delivering content.