got geoint?

Merry Christmas Eve to all and welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post from got geoint? It’s not very often that X-mas eve falls on our favorite day, Friday. So, here we are. The stars have lined up and we have an X-mas eve themed FFT post. So, naturally, we cover our favorite holiday topic, Norad Santa, but we also feature video of the “Digital Story of the Nativity.” It’s very very cool. Oh, and just to remind you all that we still have plenty of got geoint? stickers available! Feel free to email info@usgif.org to get more stickers. Merry Christmas Eve to all!

Help Raise Money for GEOINT Education!
Before we dive into the post, we wanted to remind our readers that USGIF has recently become apart of the Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area (CFCNCA). As such, USGIF uses money raised to to fund our USGIF Scholarship Program, educational workshops like GEOINT 101, and other academic offerings like providing earth science-related materials to underprivileged schools. The deadline to donate is now January 17, 2011! Click here to donate.

Secret Santa: NORAD Mum on How it Tracks St. Nick
Lots of military secrets are hidden behind the gleaming walls of NORAD’S headquarters building, including this one: Just how do they get Santa’s flight path onto their computer screens every Christmas Eve? Tracking Santa’s travels is a celebrated tradition at the North American Aerospace Command, and it unfolds Friday for the 55th year. NORAD insiders drop hints about how they do it — “ultra-cool, high-tech, high-speed digital cameras,” radar, satellites and Canadian Forces fighter jets. They happily release a flurry of facts: They answered 74,000 phone calls and 3,500 e-mails from around the world last year, all asking for Santa’s location. Read the full AP post story here. By the way, as of 8:30 a.m. EST today, Santa is officially at Lae, Papua New Guinea. Check out more here.

A Social Media Retelling Of The First Christmas
What if Mary and Joseph gave birth to their baby Jesus in the Digital Age? How would they have used the social media tools available to a world where one out of every 13 people have a Facebook account, and one tweet or YouTube video can catch the attention of thousands or millions if it goes viral. The Portuguese digital marketing company, Excentric not only explores that possibility but has produced a video titled, “The Digital Story of the Nativity” to explain to the world how they see that story playing out in the year 2010. Read the full InvestorSport article here and check out the video below.

Tags: Christmas and GEOINT, Friday's Food for Thought, geospatial intelligence, GIS, got geoint?, NORAD Santa, Norad Santa and GEOINT, USGIF