Track Santa Via Google Earth and iPhone

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The journey of Santa across the world can be tracked via your computer. Children can access his passage via Google Earth and Apple iPhone. 

Santa has been tracked each Christmas for the past 50 years by North American Aerospace Defense Command, says reports.

AppleInsider gives the run-down on how to access Santa:

Google and NORAD first partnered in 2007, bringing the holiday-themed service to Google Maps and the Google Earth program. Users can download the Google Earth plug-in at noradsanta.org. Google Earth is available for PC, Mac and Linux. In addition to a desktop application, Google Earth can also be accessed as a Safari plugin and a mobile iPhone application.
Additional tracking can be done through YouTube, where footage from NORAD’s “Santa cams” is available, and real-time search on Google, which scans Twitter, Friendfeed, news, blogs and more. Twitter users can also get tweets from @noradsanta.

How Santa first started being tracked has a storied history, according to the Los Angeles Times:

According to legend, NORAD’s Santa tracking tradition started in 1955 by accident. The (Colorado Springs) Gazette ran a Sears Roebuck ad that told kids to dial a number if they wanted to talk to Santa.

But the number was one digit off. When the first call came to NORAD’s predecessor, a military colonel who answered the phone played along. Unable to break the boy’s heart, so he sounded a booming “Ho, ho, ho!” and pretended to be Santa Claus.

When more calls poured in, Col. Harry W. Shoup stopped playing Santa. Instead, staffers at the military installation started pretending to be checking the radars for Santa’s sleigh.

ABC News has other ways you can track Santa’s progress:

It’s one of those traditions that has just kept going since 1955, even though the Cold War is over, and — oh, forgive us for bursting a bubble — the NORAD Santa Tracker is now run by a civilian company, Analytical Graphics, Inc., of Exton, Pa. Your taxpayer dollars are not hard at work in this case; the project has corporate sponsors from GE to Google to Verizon.

Click here for the official NORAD Santa Tracker 2009.

If you don’t have access to the Google Earth plug-in, you can keep up to date with Santa’s travels throughTwitter, the NORAD Santa Facebook page, and aPicasa Web album. You can also use Google Maps for mobile at m.noradsanta.org or receive mobile SMS updates by entering your phone number at the bottom of the Norad Santa homepage. Each SMS update includes a link to a Google Map.

There are numerous ways to track Santa thanks to Google and NORAD this season. Not only will you have some fun, but your kids will learn a little bit of geography along the way.