year. Some, such as NORAD Tracks Santa, the Google Santa Tracker, the emailSanta.com Tracker and the Santa Update Project, have endured. Others, such as the Airservices Australia Tracks Santa Project, the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport's Tracks Santa Project, the NASA Tracks Santa Project, and the Bing Maps Platform Tracks Santa Project, no longer actively track Santa. The origins of the NORAD Tracks Santa programme began in the United States in 1955, when a Sears Roebuck store in Colorado Springs, Colorado, gave children a number to call a "Santa hotline". The number was mistyped, resulting in children calling the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) on Christmas Eve instead. The Director of Operations, Colonel Harry Shoup, received the first call for Santa and responded by claiming to children that there were signs on the radar that Santa was indeed heading south from the North Pole. A tradition began, which continued under the name NORAD Tracks Santa when in 1958 Canada and the United States jointly created the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). This "tracking" can now be done via the Internet and NORAD's website. In the past, many local television stations in the United States and Canada likewise claimed they "tracked Santa Claus" in their own metropolitan areas through the stations' meteorologists. In December 2000, the Weather Channel built upon these local efforts to provide a national Christmas Eve "Santa tracking" effort, called "SantaWatch", in cooperation with NASA, the International Space Station, and Silicon Valley-based new multimedia firm Dreamtime Holdings. Currently, most local television stations in the United States and Canada rely upon outside established "Santa tracking" efforts, such as NORAD Tracks Santa. Many other websites became available year-round, devoted to Santa Claus and purport to keep tabs on his activities in his workshop. Many of these websites also include email addresses or web forms which claim to allow children to send email to Santa Claus. One particular website called emailSanta.com was created when a 1997 Canada Post strike prevented Alan Kerr's young niece and nephews from sending their letters to Santa; in a few weeks, over 1,000 emails to Santa were received, and the site had received 1,000 emails a day one year later. Some websites, such as Santa's page on Microsoft's former Windows Live Spaces or emailSanta.com, have used or still use "bots" or other automated programs to compose and send personalized and realistic replies. Microsoft's website has given