It will serve as a place for the most technology-savvy president in U.S. history and his new administration "to connect with the rest of the nation and the world," Macon Phillips, director of new media for the White House, said on the site.

The site features a web-log or blog, an online "briefing room" and allows visitors to sign up for e-mail updates on major announcements and decisions, and to send in their own ideas.

As his first official act, Obama proclaimed Jan. 20, 2009 as a "National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation," calling on Americans to serve one another and come together to carry forward American democracy.

Phillips said Obama also remained committed to his campaign pledge to make "his administration the most open and transparent in history."

All executive orders and proclamations would be published on the website, as well as all non-emergency legislation, giving the public five days to comment before they are signed by the new president, Phillips said.

Citing Obama's early work as a community organizer in Chicago, Phillips said, "Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the Internet will play an important role in that."

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama takes the oath of office)

"President-elect Obama's victory sends the unmistakable message that America is a nation that offers equal opportunity to people of all backgrounds," the Council on American Islamic Relations said in a statement just minutes after Obama's victory speech in Chicago.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the group, said they hoped to offer the Obama administration some support and advice.

"We look forward to having the opportunity to work with the Obama administration in protecting the civil rights of all Americans, projecting an accurate image of America in the Muslim world and playing a positive role in securing our nation," Awad said.

Obama, who will be the first black U.S. president and whose middle name is Hussein, is a Christian. But throughout the campaign, false rumors circulated on the Internet that he was Muslim and therefore not a suitable candidate for the White House.

Son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, Obama spent part of his childhood in largely Muslim Indonesia.

More than 20 million copies of a film called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" were included as advertising supplements in newspapers across the country, many in battleground states.

CAIR lashed out against the film, which was distributed by a private group unaffiliated with the McCain campaign and featured suicide bombers, children being trained with guns, and a Christian church said to have been defiled by Muslims.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican and African American, endorsed Obama last month saying that he was troubled by the attempts to link Obama to Islam.

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" he asked on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion 'he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America," Powell said.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton (Obama speaks at his victory rally)

The call came as Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who helped George W. Bush win two presidential elections, stood silently on screen.

Fox first called the state shortly after its polls closed at 9 p.m., then rescinded its call moments later, saying it had "put the check mark in the wrong place." Around 9:19 p.m., the network reaffirmed its initial call, joined within minutes by other networks.

Rove, now an analyst for the network, made no immediate comments about the loss of Ohio for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. No Republican has won the White House without carrying Ohio.

But Nicolle Wallace, a McCain campaign adviser, acknowledged to the network that the losses in Ohio and another key state that McCain had hoped to win, Pennsylvania, were bad news.

"We're hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst," Wallace said, but added that McCain was known for his dramatic comebacks.

"When you work for John McCain you learn one thing, it's not over until it's over," she said.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama makes calls to voters in Indianapolis)

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.