Dashing through the snow...with NORAD, YouTube and Google

Every Christmas Eve, children all over the world ask themselves—and their parents—questions about Santa’s magical journey. How does Santa visit so many children in one night? Will he eat the cookies I left out? How does he fit all those presents into his sleigh? These childhood mysteries are part of what makes the Santa tradition so special.

There’s one timeless question that we’re proud to say we can help answer: Where in the world is Santa at this very moment? Thanks in part to recent advances in warp-speed GPS technology and some very clever elves (elveneering?) NORAD Tracks Santa is once again prepped and ready to go.

Starting tomorrow, December 24 at 2:00 a.m. EST, visit www.noradsanta.org to follow Santa as he journeys around the world delivering presents to children in more than 200 countries and territories. There are a few different ways to find the jolly man in his unmistakable red suit over the course of the day, so feel free to track him using any of the following methods:

• Subscribe to his YouTube channel: Santa’s home on YouTube is at http://www.youtube.com/noradtrackssanta. That’s where you can find videos from his journey throughout the night. This “Commander's Holiday Message” offers a peek of what to expect:

• See Santa on a Google Map: On your home computer or laptop, visit www.noradsanta.org and choose your preferred language. You’ll see a large Google Map on the page displaying Santa’s current location and his next stop. Click the video icons to watch “Santa Cam” videos, and click the gift icons to learn more about each city.

• Watch Santa fly with the Google Earth Plug-in: From www.noradsanta.org, click on the link Track Santa in Google Earth. You'll see Santa steering his sleigh right on the webpage. If you don't have the Google Earth plug-in, you can get ready by downloading it ahead of time.

• Follow Santa on your phone: Track Santa from your mobile phone by opening Google Maps for mobile and searching for [santa]. Or, visit m.noradsanta.org on your phone’s browser.

Get real-time information about Santa’s location: Use Google’s Realtime Search to get updates from social networks, news and micro-blogs like Twitter at @noradsanta, and keep up with news about his journey on this Facebook page.

For any techie questions you might have, we’ve also put together some helpful tips and tricks about all the cool ways you can experience Santa’s journey. And now that you know how to follow Saint Nick on Christmas Eve, it’s our tradition to tell the story of how this all started...

NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) first began to track Santa in 1955 when a misprinted advertisement in a Sears & Roebuck catalogue mistakenly led callers expecting a Santa-hotline to the NORAD commander-in-chief's telephone. Embracing the spirit of the season, NORAD used its satellite and radar capabilities to offer callers sleigh-location updates, and has tracked Santa's whereabouts on Christmas Eve ever since. Then in 2004, Google started tracking Santa on Google Earth as a 20% project, which in 2007 grew into a partnership with NORAD, adding the mapping technology of Google Maps and Google Earth to the NORAD experience. Over the years, other Google teams have also joined in the holiday fun (YouTube, Google Voice’s www.SendACallFromSanta.com and Google SketchUp).

As we approach this year’s Christmas Eve adventure, Santa was able to take a break from the preparations to visit the New York Stock Exchange this past Monday. His helpful elves kept everything at the North Pole on schedule while folks from Google and NORAD attended the Closing Bell ceremony, and stood alongside Santa from Macy’s going over last minute details about tomorrow’s big ride:

Santa with NORAD, Google and members of the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation 

that’s me, the tall guy in the back row clapping)

So don’t forget to visit www.noradsanta.org tomorrow morning starting at 2:00 a.m. EST when Santa embarks on his flight. From all of us here at Google and YouTube, happy holidays and here’s to a very happy New Year!

Brian McClendon, Original Google Engineering Elf, recently watched “Picasa 3.8 Face Movie.”

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Celebrating our partners’ success

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on another incredible year in online video. During the last 12 months you all watched more than 700 billion YouTube videos, and uploaded more than 13 million hours of content to the site. We met a bunch of new faces (and fruits) and celebrated as new YouTube partners hit the big time with millions of views. Indeed, our partner program grew to around 15,000 participants worldwide.

We’re privileged to work with the most passionate and talented partners in the world, who produce and upload videos that inspire us, make us laugh and move us -- and, most importantly, change the way we look at the world. In bedrooms, garages and studios across the globe, these talented and entrepreneurial YouTube partners are building the next generation of media companies, and in July this year we announced a new way we’d be supporting this via Partner Grants.

It’s clear that we want to see YouTube partners continue to create great video and further push the boundaries of what’s possible online. To that end, today we’re giving a $1,000 credit at B&H Photo to 500 partners around the world, who primarily create and distribute their content online, to purchase new video production equipment. This group includes well-known YouTube stars like ShayCarl, MysteryGuitarMan and FreddieW (and this past weekend we learned the latter two make quite a guitar-bass duo), and also successful musicians like Kina Grannis and promising new talents like EmilyNoel83, who was the inaugural winner of our “On The Rise” program last month. Collectively, these 500 partners generated billions of video views in 2010, and we chose them to receive a $1,000 credit based on their popularity during 2010, as well as their online focus.

We hope this will provide our most popular partners with the tools they need -- whether it be a new camera, sound & lighting equipment or editing software -- to produce even higher quality videos and ultimately drive bigger audiences to their work. Hundreds of creative people all around the world have launched professional careers after using YouTube as a global platform to demonstrate their talent - we want to see this number continue to grow.

On behalf of the entire YouTube community, we thank these partners for sharing their creativity and talent with us, and we look forward to what’s to come in 2011 and beyond.

Tom Pickett, Director of Content Operations & Online Creators, recently watched “P4A: The Annoying Orange Interviewed by Tay Zonday.”

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It’s all about practice

Welcome to the final post in Howcast’s Modern 101 for Emerging Digital Filmmakers. On Friday, October 1, we kicked off our series with Embracing exploration: being a filmmaker today and today we’re wrapping up with a video co-produced with Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, How has the web changed film school?

Over the course of our series, we shared breakfast with our Howcast Emerging Filmmakers and learned instant gratification is a huge benefit to being a web filmmaker; we offered up a digital roadmap for filmmakers; sat in on Shooting People’s Ingrid Kopp’s Digital Bootcamp; talked with some producers about how the web is changing film festivals; and outlined one filmmaker’s plan of attack for distributing and promoting his short documentary. (Plus, lots more!)

We felt it was fitting to end up at the beginning of a film career -- talking to current film students and professors about how the web complements a formal film education and how web filmmaking will fit into students’ careers after graduation.



As the students at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy explain in their video, they watch hundreds of hours of web video each week and they upload regularly. The web is giving them a chance to learn how audiences respond to their ideas and their professors see it as a viable venue for quality work. This is exciting news for filmmakers everywhere. Whether you’re in school or not, the web’s vast network of videos, collaborators, and viewers is reachable within minutes.

There has always been one thing about film school that can’t really be summed up in a course catalogue and a filmmaker can’t get working in a vacuum, and that’s the chance to fine tune your craft amongst other young creators and veteran professionals. Create, share, get feedback, create again. It’s all about practice. This chance to practice was really only previously available to a small few with the resources to access equipment and education. Thanks to technology, today a filmmaker anywhere -- in film school, in high school, or even a hobbyist -- can see an innovative video, be inspired to make their own, upload, and get insight from a worldwide community of filmmakers. To me, that’s been the most important lesson we shared in our blog series.

Happy holidays and happy shooting!

Heather Menicucci, Director, Howcast Filmmakers Program, recently watched “I Hope This Gets To You”.

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What makes an ad worth spreading?

Today we bring you a guest post from Chris Anderson, Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Anderson explains how TED and YouTube are teaming up to present a challenge called 'Ads Worth Spreading'.

Video is a powerful medium for spreading ideas. Over the past four years, TED has posted over 800 TEDTalks on TED.com and on YouTube. We've been thrilled to see the world respond -- watching the videos more than 375 million times.

Our mission -- of spreading ideas around the world -- is supported in part by advertising. And we believe that advertising should evoke the same emotions a TEDTalk does -- it should make you think, make you respond, make you want to share -- a great idea, a product that makes the world better, an initiative that might change the world. Like YouTube, we want to see the same level of passion in online ads as we do in our TEDTalks. So, we’ve created a challenge called 'Ads Worth Spreading' to solicit the best ads that raise the bar, elevate the craft and invent new forms of online engagement.

We invite you to enter the competition. Entries can be hysterically funny, stunningly beautiful, or just intriguing, fascinating, ingenious and persuasive. For inspiration, check out examples of great creative on YouTube Show and Tell. It is free to enter, the submission deadline is February 7, 2011, and full contest rules are right here.

We’re excited to see your ads worth spreading!

Chris Anderson, TED Curator, recently watched "Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man."

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