We get a birds-eye view of the action, Dubya gets the last word, and Whitehouse.gov no longer hides how many Americans were killed in 9/11.

This half-meter resolution image of the United States Capitol, Washington D.C. was collected by the GeoEye-1 satellite on Jan. 20, 2009 to commemorate the Inauguration of President Barack Obama. The image, taken through high, whispy white clouds, shows the masses of people attending the Inaugural Celebration. (Click to zoom)

The Presidential inaugural address was widely seen as a repudiation of 8 years of the Bush Administration, with Dubya sitting just a few feet away. He was diplomatic:

To read his words literally, Mr. Obama blamed no one other than the country itself, critiquing “our collective failure to make hard choices” and a willingness to suspend national ideals “for expedience’s sake” — a clear reference to the cascade of decisions ranging from interrogation policies to wiretapping to the invasion of Iraq. - New York Times

After the festivities, and Bush landed in Midland, Texas, he gave his final speech to a small crowd that had gathered. It was Bush’s last chance to insist he wasn’t a two term screw-up.

George and Laura Bush at a “Welcome Home” rally in Midland, Texas. (Matt Slocum/Associated Press)

I always felt it was important to tackle the tough issues today and not try to pass them on to future presidents, and future generations. I never took an opinion poll to tell me what to think. And I’m coming home with my head held high and a sense of accomplishment. - George W. Bush, January 20th, 2009

Meantime, 60 seconds after Obama took the Oath of Office, his high tech boys in the backroom flipped the switch to the new Whitehouse.gov website. The differences are remarkable.

After

Before

Perhaps even more telling, is what’s behind the website itself. ROBOTS.TXT is a file that sits behind the scenes on every website in the world. It tells search engines like Google what they can — and more importantly — cannot archive for us to search. It’s usually reserved for telling Google to avoid folders that have computer programs in them (since we don’t read binary), but the Bush Administration used ROBOTS.TXT to block almost 2,400 sections of its version of Whitehouse.gov, including pages dedicated to listing those who died in 9/11 (Source: Kottke.org):

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /query.html
Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /omb/query.html
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /expectmore/query.html
Disallow: /results/search
Disallow: /results/query.html
Disallow: /earmarks/search
Disallow: /earmarks/query.html
Disallow: /help
Disallow: /360pics/text
Disallow: /911/911day/text
Disallow: /911/heroes/text

The Obama Whitehouse.gov has 2 lines:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

As far as the speech itself goes (full text here), scientists from NASA to the Mayo Clinic must have jumped for joy over this line:

We will restore science to its rightful place…

The Bush Administration’s Christian fundamentalist view has set the United States back more than just 8 years. In his two terms, countries including Canada and Britain have leapfrogged the Americans in such critical areas as stem cell research.

What's the deal with THIS guy behind Obama? Forget the faux-pas of wearing the same tie as the future President, during the most historic moment in US politics in a century, he decides NOW is the time to fiddle with his iPhone?

How can you tell this is the Inauguration Youth Ball? Everyone whips out their cameraphone to capture the moment.