Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘New Holiday’

A New Holiday Tradition: Track Santa Online

Since 1995, when Sears mistakenly printed NORAD’s phone number in its catalog instead of the number of its Santa hotline, NORAD has offered an online Santa tracker during the holidays. Now, working together with Google, NORAD continues to offer the same service during the holidays. Starting at 2pm ET on Christmas Eve, the newly enhanced Santa Tracker will go live.

Sponsor

This year, Google will use the Google Earth plugin to power noradsanta.org. According to Google, over 8 million people used the site to track Santa in 2008.

In addition, Google also now offers a mobile site (m.noradsanta.org). In keeping with the times, NORAD also offers a Twitter account this year where “you can keep up with news about Santa’s flight.”

Discuss

Read the whole story…

The Engadget Show tapes today with HTC’s Drew Bamford and Chris Grant of Joystiq (and giveaways!)

The Engadget Show is happening again, humans! Today, November 22nd, we’ll be bringing that live magic back to the stage as we sit down with Drew Bamford (you can read a bit about him here), director of HTC’s Innovation Center (the place where things like the Sense UI are born).

We’ll also be joined by Joystiq’s Editor-in-chief Chris Grant for a special roundtable discussion focused on gaming, and we’ll be demoing a bunch of new holiday titles as well as Spawn Labs’ gaming placeshifter!

As a bonus, we’ve got giveaways for everyone in the audience, plus one of the lucky attendees will walk away with that Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle we just got our hands on — and HTC will be giving away a Droid Eris as well!

The show takes place at the Tishman Auditorium at Parsons The New School for Design. As you may already know, we film live in front of an audience once a month — but if you can’t make it, don’t worry. We’re bringing the video back home to Engadget (and as a free download here, in the iTunes Store, or the Zune Marketplace) for your viewing pleasure.

The beautiful venue (which you can see in a photo after the break) is located at 66 W. 12th Street between 5th and 6th Aves. Seating is limited and tickets will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis — which means if you want to join us in the audience for the show, you’ll have to arrive early and be prepared for a little wait.

Here are the facts you need to know about the show:

• The show is graciously sponsored by Nokia, and hosted by Parsons The New School for Design
  
• The total show length will be around an hour
• The amazing Glomag will be performing live along with visualist Dan Winckler!

Here is what you need to know if you want to be part of the audience:

• There is no admission fee — tickets are completely free
• The event is all ages
• The venue seats just over 450 people
• Parsons students are welcomed, and we encourage them to come!
• Tickets will be available for pickup at the Tishman Auditorium at 2PM on the 22nd, and we’re strongly encouraging people to get their tickets and not stand in line — if you have a ticket, you’ll have a seat!
• You’ll need to hold onto your ticket stub to be eligible for the giveaways
• You cannot pick up tickets for other people — if you want your friend to get a ticket, bring your friend!
• The show begins at 5PM, and doors will open at 4:30PM

If you’re a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget.com, and we’ll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget.com.

Continue reading The Engadget Show tapes today with HTC’s Drew Bamford and Chris Grant of Joystiq (and giveaways!)

The Engadget Show tapes today with HTC’s Drew Bamford and Chris Grant of Joystiq (and giveaways!) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

Palm’s Pixi TV spot heads in a new direction, bids adieu to creepy redhead

Palm, somehow finally managing to glean that the creepy, confusing, weirdly not-relaxing spots they’d been rolling out for the Pre weren’t having the kind of impact they probably had hoped for, appears to have turned over a new leaf. Witness the jubilant, effective new holiday campaign for the Pixi. We have to hand it to the ad department — this one actually kind of works. See the full video after the break… and, goodbye creepy lady.

Continue reading Palm’s Pixi TV spot heads in a new direction, bids adieu to creepy redhead

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm’s Pixi TV spot heads in a new direction, bids adieu to creepy redhead originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

Pandora Opens Its Box A Bit More With Twitter, Facebook, And Gifting Integration

Currently, if you want to share a Pandora station or song with a friend, you have to email it to them. Last time I checked, this isn’t 1994. Tonight, Pandora is joining the 21st century with the addition of simple ways to share stations and songs on Twitter and Facebook. And it’s further emphasizing a feature that no one seems to realize exists: Gifting Pandora stations.

On Pandora’s main playback pages you will now see a new set of buttons next to the traditional playback ones. These include a Twitter button, a Facebook button, a mail button, and a gift button. Clicking on any of those allows you to send the current station or current song you’re listening to via those respective services.

For Twitter, Pandora is using the API to launch its own tweet box that allows you to select whether to tweet the song or the station, as well as edit your 140 character message that is being sent. If you’re going to be tweeting a lot and don’t feel like doing this over and over again, you can select “Always use this option and message” and Pandora will remember it, allowing you to skip that step.

For Facebook, Pandora uses Connect to allow you to post songs and stations to your Facebook profile and News Feed. You’ll also be able to play song previews (30 seconds) right inline on Facebook.

For the gifting feature, Pandora takes you to a page that allows you to create a customized station based on either an artist or a song. You can choose up to 5 artists or songs for one station. You then name the station, choose a skin for the message, and enter the email addresses of those you wish to send it to, along with a personal message.

This gifting feature, which has existed in the past, but was previously hard to find, is totally free. And it will feature a new holiday option when that time of year rolls around, we’re told. “It’s sort of our version of making a mix tape for someone,” Pandora CTO Tom Conrad tells us.

And it’s another another way to monetize a bit better. When a user receives the gift email and clicks on the link, they are taken to a gift mix custom page that is sponsored. From there, a user has to click one more time to launch their station.

When users on Facebook and Twitter click on the Pandora links sent out, they’ll be redirected to a redesigned landing page that will allow them to either play a 30 second preview of a song (if it was a song that was sent out) or a link to launch the Pandora station (if it was a station that was sent out). If it’s the former, there is also a big button to create a new station based on that song.

So why is Pandora doing this? Well obviously moving into the 21st century where people share via Twitter and Facebook rather than email should help increase usage. But Conrad is quick to note that sharing is the key to this, not massive viral tweeting. There will be no auto-posting to Twitter nonsense, we’re told.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Read the whole story…