CoveritLive

CoveritLive is a free live-blogging platform that is ideal for high-school sports, election night or other live events that have the potential to keep your site's users engaged for long periods of time. It also allows for user interaction, which means it can be used to host question-and-answer sessions or panel discussions. Some newspapers use it for breaking news coverage.

Why live blogging?

In some ways, live blogging is like operating an event-specific chat room in that you're dealing with quickly-posted, chronologically-organized short bursts of information. The difference is that in this case you have control over what your readers see. The user's comments are all moderated by you and one administrator can moderate a conversation among panelists that you designate, which can create a more focused dialogue than a chat room, whose dialogue can be sidetracked by a few vocal users.

Usability

The user interface is simple to use and it's easy to embed into your site. You can embed the reader interface into your site long before you're scheduled to start and readers can sign up for an e-mail notification whenever you go live. The administration interface and user interface are also both viewable on a cell phone with internet access. If you need any help doing any of that, there are several screencasts online that can show you how to carry out the basic functions.

Integration

You can add photos, YouTube videos and live video streams from Mogulus or USTREAM into the blog (including advertising, of course). It'll also pull in feeds from Twitter, either by user name or hashtag.

Cost

They've just announced a paid version that provides a few extra features, but most of them are only useful if you host a lot of live chats. The free version will work just fine for most users.