Where is Santa Right Now? How to Track St. Nick

Dec 24, 2010

Santa's sleigh isn't exactly a stealth bomber. Here are some ways you can track the man in red as he makes his yuletide rounds.

On Christmas Eve, Santa takes to the skies, where he's tracked by the multi-billion-dollar technological machine that is the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). For more than 50 years, NORAD has "tracked" Saint Nick every Christmas (After all, it's the second most important task to take place at Cheyenne Mountain, next to the Stargate Program.

NORAD's Santa-tracking was born out of a typo in a Sears ad in 1955. Sears ran an ad for a Santa Claus hotline in a Colorado Springs newspaper. Unfortunately, the number was listed incorrectly, and children instead ended up calling NORAD's predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD). Yes, a typographic error caused one of our nation's quirkiest holiday traditions!



For decades, NORAD has run its own Santa-tracking hotline, letting youngsters know where in the sky Jolly Force One was every December 24. In 1997, that hotline became a Web site, and ever since we've been able to follow Santa on our computers. The official site, NORAD Tracks Santa, is your best hub for following the jolly old elf, and most non-NORAD Santa sites that claim to track Santa usually only do so through NORAD's Google Maps widget.

Thanks to Google, there are now multiple ways to track Santa. Not only can you follow him on Google Maps, but you can also track him from even higher in the sky with NORAD's Google Earth Santa-tracking widget. If you use iGoogle as a home page, you can even follow Santa with the NORAD Tracks Santa iGoogle Gadget, which lets you watch as his sleigh passes over major American cities.

If you want to track Santa on your smartphone, there are several options. Unfortunately, you should ignore most of them for being overly Scrooge-like. The iTunes Store offers a small handful of iPhone and iPad Santa-tracking apps, but most of them are for-profit apps not administered by NORAD; they seem to be little more than NORAD widget-accessing apps tossed on the iTunes Store for a buck or two a pop. Fission Media Group's free Santa GPS seems to be the lone happy exception, following Santa's flight path on both the iPhone and iPad. The Android Market is in the same boat, but Active9.com's Santa Tracker Live offers free Santa-watching for your Android devices.

If you have Google Maps on your Android, iOS, or Blackberry device, you can track Santa for free on December 24 just by searching for "Santa." It's free, simple, and doesn't even require a download.

Let's be honest here. This Christmas, Amazon is sending more toys to boys and girls than Santa Claus, thanks to a global ordering and shipping infrastructure. If Amazon is the Santa of the digital age, then UPS is its sleigh. If you really want to follow your packages and make sure the kids get their long-awaited toys and video games, you're better off watching UPS.com or downloading the UPS Mobile app on your phone. It's not as pretty or festive as the various Santa-tracking techniques, but it's a lot more useful.

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