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Google Santa Tracker
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- callahad 14y agoGoogle was the map provider for NORAD's Santa Tracker (http://www.noradsanta.org/en/track.html http://www.noradsanta.org/en/track.html) for the past five years. This year, NORAD went with Bing. (http://searchengineland.com/this-year-norad-tracks-santa-with-microsoft-bing-not-google-142313 http://searchengineland.com/this-year-norad-tracks-santa-wit...) The official word? "This year, NTS and Google mutually agreed to go in new directions, and we are excited to welcome a number of new contributors, to include Microsoft, Windows Azure, Bing, and iLink-systems, among others, to help us in our mission of tracking Santa. The ability to work with a diverse team of contributors is fundamental to the NTS mission, and we appreciate all of the continued support of all contributors."
- jaryd 14y agoI went through the entire Santa Call portion of the application and at the very end it wouldn't place the call because it's too late. OK--I get that. However, it offered me no way to schedule the call for later or to save my progress! Be warned!
- benesch 14y agoI suppose it's kid-themed, but having the words appear one by one (like Santa is actually typing) is incredibly irritating. The lack of a save function would be bearable if the words appeared all at once.
- benburleson 14y agoThey actually say it's not for kids!
- denismars 14y agoNice work Googlers - Now for the Nexus 7 I so deserve for being a good boy this year, can I please have it in black and in its original box so it doesn't get damaged when Santa comes down my chimney. Thx.
- AskHugo 14y agoThat's pretty awesome. There are games and everything. I wonder if this was built by google employees with their "20 percent time".
- ohwp 14y agoA tech question: I'm a Opera user and notice that a lot of websites just don't work in Opera lately. Now I wonder what special Javascript is required for a page like the Santa Tracker that Opera doesn't support. Because I don't get why a simple animation used in the clock for example doesn't work. Is this a developers problem for using unsupported Javascript or is Opera having big issues keeping there browser up to date? Edit: I noticed that Opera is altering the Javascript by inserting a "browser.js" file.
- chrisbroadfoot 14y agoDamn, that's a shame. (I'm one of the engineers who worked on this site) We've been working really hard to get this out there - but unfortunately I haven't had a chance to test on Opera. What version of Opera, and what OS are you running? I'd like to make sure this works for as many people as possible. edit: Looks like our SCSS mixin didn't generate the Opera specific prefixes. We'll try to get that updated in the next couple days :-)
- level09 14y agoHow many people actually worked on this project ? (just curious)
- chrisbroadfoot 14y agoIncluding or excluding Santa and his elves?
- ohwp 14y agoWell I don't think it's a shame when Opera is to blame ;) But thanks for your reply. Version 12.11 Build 1661 Platform Win32 System Windows 7 (Server 2008) Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.11
- eirikurn 14y agoSome of the scenes are using 3d-transformations, for GPU acceleration. Opera doesn't support 3d transforms yet. :(
- shaydoc 14y agoabsolutely wonderful stuff! how the heck do you get a job doing this stuff :-) does it use parallax scrolling ?
- chrisbroadfoot 14y agoJoin Google Developer Relations: https://developers.google.com/jobs/ https://developers.google.com/jobs/ Yes, the parallax effect is really cool! There are some really interesting aspects to it (performance), which we will talk about early next year, once we've had a break.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- SuperChihuahua 14y agoTheres a Kaggle competition going on where you are supposed to optimize the route: "Traveling Santa Problem" http://www.kaggle.com/c/traveling-santa-problem http://www.kaggle.com/c/traveling-santa-problem
- dhimes 14y agoInteresting how google chrome can't 'find' noradsanta.org (but if you type in the full www.noradsanta.org it works).