Tracking Santa with NORAD on Windows 8 and Windows Phone

It’s almost time to begin the annual Santa Tracking exercise and following a post from Capt. Jeff Davis, U.S. Navy and Director, NORAD and U.S. Northern Command Public Affairs on the Official Microsoft Blog I’m tooled up and ready to entertain the munchkins on Christmas Eve.

For those not familiar with the tradition of Santa Tracking it’s been going on for 50 years, led by North American Aerospace Defense Command — aka NORAD — and was the result of a typo. Read the OMB post to get the details of that as it’s a pretty funny story.

Back to being tooled up…

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I now have the Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps loaded up so at any moment on December 24th I can let the little people see where the bearded one is. Needless to say the app will take prime spot in Kids Corner on my phone.

It’s estimated that almost 25 million people will do the same this year – tracking Santa’s journey in realtime on the web, with smartphone and by email and phone. It’s reassuring then that The Santa Tracker tool is built on the Windows Azure and Bing Maps so we know there will be no wrong turns <cough>.