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Google Santa Tracker
Official NORAD Santa Tracker
Microsoft says this is how NORAD started; I think it's great!
"It's hard to believe it all started with a typo. A program renowned the world over -- one that brings in thousands of volunteers, prominent figures such as the First Lady of the United States, and one that has been going on for more than five decades -- all started as a misprint.
That error ran in a local Colorado Springs newspaper back in 1955 after a local department store printed an advertisement with an incorrect phone number that children could use to 'call Santa.' Except that someone goofed. Or someone mistook a three for an eight. Maybe elves broke into the newspaper and changed the number. We'll never know.
But somehow, the number in the advertisement changed, and instead of reaching the 'Santa' on call for the local department store, it rang at the desk of the Crew Commander on duty at the Continental Air Defence Command Operations Center, the organization that would one day become the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or 'NORAD.'
And when the commander on duty, Col. Harry Shoup, first picked up the phone and heard kids asking for Santa, he could have told them they had a wrong number.
But he didn't.
Instead, the kind-hearted colonel asked his crew to play along and find Santa's location. Just like that, NORAD was in the Santa-tracking business."
Official NORAD Santa Tracker
Microsoft says this is how NORAD started; I think it's great!
"It's hard to believe it all started with a typo. A program renowned the world over -- one that brings in thousands of volunteers, prominent figures such as the First Lady of the United States, and one that has been going on for more than five decades -- all started as a misprint.
That error ran in a local Colorado Springs newspaper back in 1955 after a local department store printed an advertisement with an incorrect phone number that children could use to 'call Santa.' Except that someone goofed. Or someone mistook a three for an eight. Maybe elves broke into the newspaper and changed the number. We'll never know.
But somehow, the number in the advertisement changed, and instead of reaching the 'Santa' on call for the local department store, it rang at the desk of the Crew Commander on duty at the Continental Air Defence Command Operations Center, the organization that would one day become the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or 'NORAD.'
And when the commander on duty, Col. Harry Shoup, first picked up the phone and heard kids asking for Santa, he could have told them they had a wrong number.
But he didn't.
Instead, the kind-hearted colonel asked his crew to play along and find Santa's location. Just like that, NORAD was in the Santa-tracking business."
I can't believe no one has posted this until now - usually I'm watching the countdown from early December! 
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