We love this kind of thing but for today only you can track Santa delivering his presents in Google Earth. As I write at 13:15 GMT I can see him whizzing around Lae, Papua New Guinea and he is already up to 16.5 million presents delivered.

There are two major views to this implementation, the first being on landing at a destination you can see Santa whizzing around (see below):

and the second is tracking Santa and his reindeers tracking across the sky in real time to his next destination (see below):

Whilst at Earthware we try and avoid interactive mapping gimmicks, if there is a day when a gimmick can be allowed it has to be Christmas Day.  I am certainly going to go home and show this to my 3 and 4 year old children so they can get excited.

Well done to everyone involved in creating this fun Google Earth implementation and if you are still able to see it then you can view Santa’s journey at Norad Santa - track Santa delivering Christmas presents in Google Earth.