Every year, children and adults gather around computers, tablets, or even smartphones and track Santa’s movements across the world delivering presents on Christmas Eve.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) claims to have been tracking Santa for over 50 years, but it was joined by a competitor a few years ago when Norad, which used Google Maps to track Santa, switched allegiences to Microsoft.
Now Google has had its own tracker up and running for a few years now, the competition to keep track of Santa is growing, but which service delivers the best tracking?
Norad now offers a dedicated tracking website which features games and music and even movies. Find Norad’s tracking website here.
The Norad Santa tracker has a very tech feel to it, and ‘Santa’s village’ contains an arcade, a library, and music performed by a military band.
Norad’s tracker is a wholly Microsoft affair, however. The website says: "This year, NORAD Tracks Santa partnered with Microsoft to bring to life… A beautiful, innovative web experience built by Internet Explorer…
Santa tracking powered by Bing Maps…
And other cool features from Skype, OneDrive, and Outlook.com"
Google own Santa tracker this year has an interactive Santa village and also features games. Google’s offering also has a countdown clock to Christmas, but is three hours behind Norad’s.
Google’s tracker, which is now available in an Android app, opens a new project, game , or video every day throughout December until Christmas. There’s even a short Javascript coding challenge which will help teach children the basics of coding in that language.
Furthermore, there’s an option to stream Santa’s journey across the glove to your TV on Christmas Eve using a Chromecast dongle
