Since 1955, when Sears mistakenly printed NORAD’s phone number in its catalog instead of the number of its Santa hotline, NORAD has offered Santa-realted services by phone. Now, working together with Google, NORAD continues to offer the same service online during the holidays. Starting at 2 p.m. ET (GMT -5) on Christmas Eve, the newly enhanced Santa Tracker will go live.
This year, Google will use the Google Earth plugin to powernoradsanta.org. According to Google, over eight million people used the site to track Santa in 2008.
In addition, Google also now offers a mobile site (m.noradsanta.org). In keeping with the times, NORAD also offers a Twitter account this year where “you can keep up with news about Santa’s flight.”