US military incorporates web in traditional tracking of Santa
Children wanting to track Santa Claus's global journey on Christmas Eve
have a number of options this year.
As always, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) will be
keeping tabs on Santa and children can follow his progress on Google Earth.
In addition, they can send e-mails to the tracking team or even follow Santa
on Twitter.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of a tradition that started by accident
in Colorado, in the US. Father Christmas's journey will start at 1100 GMT
and children worldwide can track his progress using Google Maps and Google
Earth.
He will pass 24 "Santa cams" around the world, providing live video feeds of
his progress, which will in turn be put onto Norad's YouTube channel as they happen.
For even more up-to-the-minute progress reports, Santa can be followed on the
Twitter microblogging service, on which he is known as @noradsanta.
And lastly, Norad volunteers can answer e-mails about Santa's journey
(the address is noradtrackssanta@gmail.com).
Newspaper misprint
Norad's 50-year tradition of tracking Father Christmas goes back to a misprint
in a Colorado newspaper advertisement in 1955.
A local child wanting to know Santa's whereabouts dialled the phone number printed,
which connected to the Continental Air Defense Command (Conad). As more mistaken
calls came in, the commander on the other end of the phone answered the queries and
the tradition continued in 1958 when Conad became Norad.
The effort spread to the internet in 1998 and in 2007 Norad's Santa tracking site saw
more than 10m visitors from 212 countries. Volunteers fielded nearly 95,000 phone
calls and 140,000 e-mails.
This year when Santa takes flight from the North Pole, more than 1,000 volunteers
will be on hand to help out.