WebSpawner.com Blog

So you’ve finished your shopping, wrapped the gifts, baked some Christmas cookies and hung your stockings by the chimney with care. Your house is decorated and lit from rooftop to foundation. So what else is there to do on Christmas Eve? Why, grab some eggnog and gather the family around the warm glow of your computer screen to track Santa’s travels online, of course!

For more than 50 years, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), a bi-national military organization ever on the watch for man-made threats in the skies over Canada and the United States, has utilized its high-tech equipment each Christmas Eve to track the travels of Santa Claus in his sleigh. Each year NORAD provides updates to radio and television stations on the progress of jolly St. Nick’s travels, and in more recent years has also been providing live tracking information on the internet.

The NORAD TRACKS SANTA 2007 website is online now with fun activities including an interactive North Pole Map with games and more, and on Christmas Eve it will provide up-to-the-minute information on the exact whereabouts of Santa and his sleigh (and the reindeer, too). Visit the website with your kids now as they are sure to find it fun, and don’t forget to bookmark it for Christmas Eve.

For the nice (and naughty) girls and boys in the United Kingdom, the Wroxall-Weather website will also provide live Santa tracking on Christmas Eve starting at 7:00pm local time. As of now, the website has a countdown timer ticking off the seconds until Santa leaves the North Pole to begin his journey.

All of us here at WebSpawner wish you and yours a safe and happy holiday season and a very happy new year!

Microsoft’s Windows Live Search has recently added a fun new twist to searching the internet with its Live Search Club.

This free service allows members to play online games including Seekadoo, Dingbats, Flexicon, and Chicktionary, among others. To find clues and answer questions in the games, players conduct searches through the MSN Live Search engine, conveniently provided within the game window.

Each completed game earns the player “Ticket” points, which can be redeemed for prizes… but these prizes aren’t stick-on gold stars or junky plastic carnival loot. Available prizes include music downloads, t-shirts, electronic gadgets, computer software and even Xbox 360 consoles and games.

Since the launch of the Live Search Club, MSN has seen its share of the U.S. search market increase noticeably. According to Danny Sullivan’s article at Search Engine Land some metrics show that MSN’s slice of the overall search pie increased almost 5% from May 2007 to June 2007. During the same period, search giant Google’s share dropped a little over 4%, its first decline in some time (yet it still retains more than 62% of the market).

So is the Live Search Club the slingshot that will allow MSN to take down the mighty Goliath Google? Probably not, but it is too early to tell. Regardless, Live Search Club members are likely to enjoy their prizes, and perhaps also likely to start using MSN Live Search as their search engine of choice.

All of us here at WebSpawner were deeply saddened to learn of Monday’s tragic events at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

Our thoughts and condolences go out to the entire Virginia Tech community - families and friends of the victims, the more than 25,000 students, the university staff and faculty, the residents of Blacksburg and the responding law enforcement personnel. We wish all of you strength as you grieve and heal.

Ask.com has opened access to a new version of its search called Askx.com. Although all of the search results themselves appear to be the same as their existing offering, Askx.com offers a new three panel approach to searching web sites, images, news and videos:

The slick new interface, devoid of both unneccessary graphic elements and large blocks of advertisement, is easy to use and a breath of fresh air.