Dashing through the snow... with NORAD and Google

Every Christmas Eve, children all over the world ask themselves—and their parents—questions about Santa’s magical journey. How does Santa visit so many children in one night? Will he eat the cookies I left out? How does he fit all those presents into his sleigh? These childhood mysteries are part of what makes the Santa tradition so special.

There’s one timeless question that we’re proud to say we can help answer: Where in the world is Santa at this very moment? Thanks in part to recent advances in warp-speed GPS technology and some very clever elves (elveneering?) NORAD Tracks Santa is once again prepped and ready to go.

Starting tomorrow, December 24 at 2:00am EST, visit www.noradsanta.org to follow Santa as he journeys around the world delivering presents to children in more than 200 countries and territories. There are a few different ways to find the jolly old man in his unmistakable red suit over the course of the day, so feel free to track him using any of the following methods:

* See Santa on a Google Map: On your home computer or laptop, visit www.noradsanta.org and choose your preferred language. You’ll see a large Google Map on the page displaying Santa’s current location and his next stop. Click the video icons to watch “Santa Cam” videos, and click the gift icons to learn more about each city.

* Watch Santa fly with the Google Earth Plug-in: From www.noradsanta.org, click on the link Track Santa in Google Earth. You'll see Santa steering his sleigh right on the webpage. If you don't have the Google Earth plug-in, you can get ready by downloading it ahead of time.

* Follow Santa on your phone: Track Santa from your mobile phone by opening Google Maps for mobile and searching for [santa]. Or, visit m.noradsanta.org on your phone’s browser.

* Subscribe to his YouTube channel: Santa’s home on YouTube is at http://www.youtube.com/noradtrackssanta. That’s where you can find videos from his journey throughout the night.

* Get real-time information about Santa’s location: Use Google’s Realtime Search to get updates from social networks, news and micro-blogs like Twitter at @noradsanta, and keep up with news about his journey on this Facebook page.

For any techie questions you might have, we’ve also put together some helpful tips and tricks about all the cool ways you can experience Santa’s journey. Now that you know how to follow Saint Nick on Christmas Eve, it’s our tradition to tell the story of how this all started...

NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) first began to track Santa in 1955 when a misprinted advertisement in a Sears & Roebuck catalogue mistakenly led callers expecting a Santa-hotline to the NORAD commander-in-chief's telephone. Embracing the spirit of the season, NORAD used its satellite and radar capabilities to offer callers sleigh-location updates, and has tracked Santa's whereabouts on Christmas Eve ever since. Then in 2004, Google started tracking Santa on Google Earth as a 20% project, which in 2007 grew into a partnership with NORAD, adding the mapping technology of Google Maps and Google Earth to the NORAD experience. Over the years, other Google teams have also joined in the holiday fun (YouTube, Google Voice’s www.SendACallFromSanta.com and Google SketchUp).

As we approach this year’s Christmas Eve adventure, Santa was able to take a break from the preparations to visit the New York Stock Exchange this past Monday. His helpful elves kept everything at the North Pole on schedule while folks from Google and NORAD attended the Closing Bell ceremony, and stood alongside Santa from Macy’s going over last minute details about tomorrow’s big ride.

So don’t forget to visit www.noradsanta.org tomorrow morning starting at 2:00am EST when Santa embarks on his flight. From all of us here at Google, happy holidays and here’s to a very happy New Year!

Follow Team HTC-Columbia on Google Maps

As a former professional cyclist, nothing beats the thrill of being in the peloton and in racing towards the finish line. Although I’ve traded in my cycling career for life as a Googler, I’m still a fan and enjoy watching my former teammates and friends battle in the races like the Tour de France, which started on Saturday. While the cyclists were preparing to tackle the pave of Arrenberg and the Cols in the Alps, I got to thinking about the ways that we can bring that experience to the hundreds of millions of fans who will be following the Tour de France over the next few weeks. Google is home to many other cycling enthusiasts, so we got together to work on ways to build a My Tracks-based gadget that will allow all the other fans and to follow the action like never before.

The My Tracks application for Android phones lets you record and share with your own outdoor activities, and now Team HTC-Columbia will use a special version of the app with SRM to transmit their telemetry and location in real-time as they make their way through the 3,642 kilometers of the Tour de France. The nine riders (sadly, now eight, as Adam Hanson was injured on Sunday) on Team HTC-Columbia are carrying HTC Legend phones with ANT+ that use My Tracks to capture their location along with their power, heart rate, cadence and speed. On www.google.com/mytrackstour, you’ll see a Google Map showing the team members’ location on the course and a detailed telemetry report. You can observe how Michael Rogers’ heart rate spikes as he attacks the climbs in the Alps on Stage 9, see how many watts Mark Cavendish puts out in the sprint on the famous sprinters’ stage into Bordeaux, and see just how fast riders climb the famous Col du Tourmalet.

From the image above, you can see how Maxime Monfort took the lead during Stage 2 between Bruxelles and Spa yesterday. Right now, the riders are racing in Stage 3, which takes them across the border into France and you can follow all the latest action on our website or then directly on your own iGoogle page.

The team also built a map gadget that is available for you to embed on your own website or blog. We’re also publishing an API that any web developer or broadcaster can use to build their own custom application or use to enhance the live television coverage. I'm excited about the potential for web developers and broadcasters to make use of the API and data in creative ways to help all the Tour de France followers (myself included!) get even closer to the action.

This project was the work of many Googlers in their 20% time, and as cycling fans ourselves, we’re happy to be able to share it with the world. We hope you enjoy this unique way of following Team HTC-Columbia over the next few weeks.

Follow your football team in South Africa, wherever you are

Whether you’ll be in South Africa in person this month, or simply cheering your team on from back home, our new tools for football fans can help you soak up the atmosphere and follow your team wherever you are in the world.

You can check out the brand new Street View imagery for South Africa which includes amazing pictures from seven of South Africa’s new football stadiums, including Soccer City in Johannesburg, Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane and Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. Each one can be explored from pitch-level in 360 degrees, both inside and out—see a preview on the Lat Long blog. These detailed images were collected over the last few months, using the Street View Trike and some serious pedal power!

You can also zoom around the host cities and stadiums in 3D. Simply turn on the 3D buildings layer in Google Earth or switch to Earth View in Google Maps, and zoom in to the chosen destination. All 10 of the football stadiums have been modelled in amazing 3D detail, as well as the South African cities of Rustenburg, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

To make it easier for people to find all these great places, South African Tourism have provided information on the most important sights. Visit maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica to start virtually exploring South Africa.

If you’re staying back home but want to find a great place to watch the match with your friends, take a look on Google Maps and look for the special football icon—that tells you that the location is one of tens of thousands of businesses who have added themselves to Google Places as a football viewing location.

Our first global Doodle 4 Google competition is well underway, with tens of thousands of children in 17 countries around the world sending us their amazing designs for a doodle around the theme of “I Love Football.” The winning doodle will be displayed internationally on the Google homepage for a day on July 11, 2010.

To make it easy for you to customize your photos to show the world which team you’re cheering for, we’ve launched a set of football-themed photo effects in Picnik. With just a few clicks, you can add digital face paint, soccer-themed stickers and team flag overlays, customized for each of the 32 qualifying teams.

Finally, it’s not just the professional players who’ve been put through their paces ahead of kick-off. In the run-up to the games, fans from around the the world have joined the legendary Dutch midfielder Edgar Davids on his Street Soccer Tour for Charity from Amsterdam, London and Paris and to eight cities in Senegal, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Edgar and his team of Street Soccer Legends have been competing against local players as they make their journey to South Africa and you can watch them on YouTube.

May the best team win!

Congratulations to Aadith Moorthy, the 2010 National Geographic Bee Champion

Tswana is a Bantu language spoken by the largest ethnic group in what landlocked country?

The production of yerbe maté, a tea made from an evergreen plant, is important to the economy of Misiones. This province is located in which country that borders Paraguay?

The Øresund Bridge, opened in 2000, connects Copenhagen, Denmark with what Swedish city?

The largest city in northern Haiti was renamed following Haiti’s independence from France. What is the present-day name of this city?

Aadith Moorthy tackled these and other questions to win this year’s National Geographic Bee held today in Washington, D.C. While he missed his first question of the day, he didn’t let that get get in his way. His win is the culmination of many months of preparation and local competitions that began last fall at schools across the country.

Aadith is a 13-year-old 8th grader from Palm Harbor, Florida and attends the Palm Land Middle School. When not studying geography, he is a South Indian classical (Carnatic) music concert singer. At the beginning of the final round, he gave the audience a taste of his talent when Alex Trebek, the host of the Bee, asked him to sing on the spot.

We’re proud that Google is this year’s sponsor of the National Geographic Bee. This contest exemplifies the importance of being geographically literate and showcases just how well these students understand the world around them. This skill-set will be a vital asset as they continue their education and careers. As you can tell from the questions above, it’s not just a matter of memorizing state and country capitals!

I had the great opportunity to speak at both the preliminary and championship rounds of the Bee and was impressed by the dedication of the teachers who made special efforts to train their school finalists and the depth of knowledge of the students. This is contest with important implications for their future lives and careers.

We’re excited to follow all of the 54 finalists to see where in the world they land.

Keeping up-to-date on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill

It is estimated that at least 6 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon explosion a month ago. Cleanup efforts are underway, but the oil has spread extensively around the Gulf and along the southern U.S. coastline. Oil has begun washing up on the beaches of Louisiana and the delicate wetlands along the Mississippi River, and can spread to Florida and throughout the Gulf as weather conditions change. This sequence of images, coming from NASA’s MODIS satellites, illustrates the movement and growth of the oil slick over the past few weeks:

The last image, taken earlier this week (on May 17), shows the coastal areas currently at risk from the spreading oil, and can help those working on the wide range of relief efforts.

You can view this and other MODIS imagery in Google Earth by downloading this KML. You can also view additional imagery and find other resources and news at our oil spill crisis response page.