got geoint?

Welcome to Friday’s Food for Thought and Season’s Greetings. With Christmas right around the corner, we wanted to highlight a holiday story that ties into imagery, mapping, GIS and Web 2.0.

For years, children have been able to track Santa’s whereabouts with Norad Tracks Santa. This year, however, NORAD is doing a Web 2.0 twist by allowing folks to track Santa on Google Earth. You will need to download Google Earth, then install the NORAD Tracks Santa file for Google Earth, which will be available Christmas Eve.

In addition, they will be providing Twitter updates from Santa here. Speaking of Twitter, we recommend you check out our got geoint? Twitter handle if you have not already. We are getting a steady stream of followers and welcome the opportunity to be connected with more folks in our community!

Finally, we stumbled upon this very humorous article about Santa being baffled about all the tracking and GPS technology. He believes that the United States and Canadian governments track his movements each year because the Federal Aviation Administration lacks the jurisdiction to make him file a flight plan. And, check out this funny quote from Santa:

“I know they do it for safety reasons and I know they use a Global Positioning Satellite system but I’m not quite certain how it all works. I think the Central Intelligence Agency has a spy among my elves who sneaks Rudy the tracking device every year in a treat because there’s nothing stuck to the bottom of my sleigh,” Claus said.

Tags: Google Earth, NORAD Tracks Santa