Google updates its open source Santa Tracker in time for Christmas

Yeah, OK... it's only August, but we're going to start talking about Christmas. Well... Google is, anyway. As it has done for a few years now, the company is planning to run its Santa Tracker tool in December and it has a few updates to share.

The web and mobile based versions of the tool are open source, meaning that developers are free to work their Christmassy magic and come up with new and innovative ideas for kids.

Based on Firebase and Polymer, Santa Tracker has been tweaked to be as battery-friendly as possible for mobile devices, and optimized to help reduced startup costs. In addition to open sourcing the main app and service, Google is also making its Santa's Village launcher available for anyone to play with.

In opening up the tool to developers -- and supporting everything from phones and tablets to smart watches and TV, as well as the web -- it's clear that Google is keen to not only bring Santa Tracker to as wide an audience as possible, but to crowd source for ideas that will help to take it in new and exciting directions.

If you want to do something unique with the Santa Tracker, you can access the source code on GitHub: google/santa-tracker-web and google/santa-tracker-android.

You can find out more on the Google Open Source blog.