Track Santa Claus With Google Maps

Track Santa Claus With Google Maps

Techtree News Staff, Dec 24, 2008 1631 hrs IST

For the first time, people can follow St Nick's trek from the icy North Pole to across the globe via their mobile phones

For the first time, people can follow Santa's trek across the globe via their mobile phones with Google Maps for Mobile and using Twitter by adding @noradsanta.

NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) has been tracking Santa since 1958 and has been tracking him via the Web since 1998. Google became its official Santa Tracking technology partner last year and hosted www.santa.org.

Santa's progressive locations on his journey can be tracked on Google Map. People can also track Santa in 3-D in Google Earth by downloading a special Norad Tracks Santa KML. It will also provide hi-resolution Santa Cam videos.

As per Brian McClendon, an engineering director at Google, in addition to the Santa Cam footage, geo-located photos from Panoramio will be viewable in Google Maps for each of Santa's stops that don't include video.

Google has upgraded its server capacity this year. "We're hoping this version of the tracker will be the best yet," says McClendon

The tracking begins at 6 a.m. EST on Christmas Eve.