And here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the Chrome experience for the Santa Tracker:

The firm claims to detect over 90% of all new iOS and Android device activations on a daily basis, thanks to 260,000 apps which utilize Flurry Analytics. Based on its numbers, here’s what the day looked like compared to the average of the first 20 days of the month:

“In order to appreciate the magnitude of new devices activated on Christmas Day, Flurry established a baseline using the average from the first 20 days of December,” says Flurry’s Peter Farago in a blog post. “Over this period, daily activations averaged around 4.0 million per day, with variance of a few hundred thousand in either direction per day. On Christmas Day, activations soared to more than 17.4 million, a 332% increase over the December baseline. By comparison, Christmas Day 2011 held the previous single-day record, having reached 6.8 million device activations. Christmas 2012 is more than 2.5 times larger than Christmas 2011, which surpassed its own baseline by more than 300%.”

Flurry also looked at app downloads on Christmas compared to the average of the first 20 days of December:

One very interesting thing the company found is that tablet activations were actually greater than smartphone activations. According to Flurry’s numbers, tablets beat out smartphones 51% to 49%, though for the first 20 days of the month, it was a much different picture at 20% to 80%.

The New York Post reports that an 8-year-old-girl from Harlem received a Teddy Bear as part of a gift collection effort at a local church. The bear looked innocuous enough, but there was a gun inside the packaging. The girl’s foster parent, Sheeba Anderson, said that her family “narrowly avoided what could have been a terrible disaster” as the gun was inoperable.

As for the child herself, she didn’t seem too concerned. In fact, upon finding the gun, she waved it around exclaiming, “Look, Miss Sheeba, I found a gun.” After that, Anderson examined all the gifts she received from the church to make sure none contained other items like “drugs or needles.”

Police are currently investigating how the gun got into the packaging, but Anderson is demanding that gift donation centers step up their security and screening process. The anonymity of the donations is especially worrisome for her as she puts it – the gifts “could have come from anywhere and anyone.”

As an aside, where can I get the Santa BugDroid in the back? I know that Google employees get some awesome, exclusive BugDroid swag, but a Santa BugDroid has mass market potential written all over it. I’ll buy 50.

Did I say enjoyed? I meant survived. Yes, it’s kind of a grueling listen. But also awesome. Check it out:

If you answered with anything less than “pure magic,” you’re nothing but a Scrooge. For the past month, YouTube user dummeh has been uploading orchestral arrangements of classic Christmas tunes mixed with classic video game tunes. The results are astounding.

Here’s some of the best for this Christmas morn:

May your Christmas be filled with video games and their oftentimes impressive music.

The Autonomous Systems Labs in Zurich has decided to give us a taste of a future in which Santa’s workforce has been replaced by robots. It seems pretty innocuous until you get to the robotic reindeer. Never have I seen something so horrific. It makes the killer robotic reindeer in Futurama seem tame in comparison.

Ah, but of course, mere words can’t begin to describe the horror so check it out below:

I think we can all agree that Santa should stick to real reindeer moving forward. As for the elves, I don’t think anybody will miss them if robots end up replacing them all. Besides, they could get electrical engineering degrees and get jobs repairing the robots that replaced them.

[h/t: Mark Cummins]

Anyway, don’t give me any of that It’s a Wonderful Life crap. It’s not. It’s a tough life filled with terrorists, explosions, detonators, machine guns, broken glass, Bruce Willis’ grin, and redemption. Fortress of Attitude knows that. You should know that.

HANS GRUBER!

[FortressOf Attitude] via JoBlo]

The Steam Holiday Sale, like past Winter sales, will last from December 20 until January 5. During that time, PC gamers will be treated to deep discounts on popular titles everyday. The sale also features the return of Flash Sales and a Community’s Choice where gamers choose which game goes on sale next.

The first round of sales shows that Steam has hit the ground running with a selection of excellent titles. The games on sale include the Prince of Persia franchise, Scribblenauts Unlimited, Mirror’s Edge, Borderlands franchise, Wargam: European Escalation and the Hitman Franchise. Speaking of Hitman, the recently released Hitman Absolution is half-off today. The excellent Borderlands 2 is half off as well, but its DLC is still at full price.

As for the current Flash Sales, you can get War of the Roses, Intrusion, Operation Flashpoint: Red River, Natural Selection II, Batman Arkham City and Fable III all al ridiculously low prices.

The first Community’s Choice sale has gamers choosing between Braid, LIMBO and The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition. If you’ve got an itch for a pretentious platformer, you might want to start voting up either Braid or LIMBO right now.

The usual publisher packs and discounts on indie games are also available for the entirety of the sale. You’ll have two weeks to grab these deals before they go back to regular price until the next sale in Spring.

“While we’ve been tracking Santa since 2004 with Google Earth, this year a team of dedicated Google Maps engineers built a new route algorithm to chart Santa’s journey around the world on Christmas Eve,” says Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Google Earth. “On his sleigh, arguably the fastest airborne vehicle in the world, Santa whips from city to city delivering presents to millions of homes. You’ll be able to follow him on Google Maps and Google Earth, and get his stats starting at 2:00 a.m. PST Christmas Eve at google.com/santatracker.”

Google also has a new Chrome extension and an Android app for Santa tracking.

“Before Santa takes off on Christmas Eve, you can also use the extension to follow the countdown to his departure, play around with his blimp, elf bus, and write messages on a frosty browser window,” says Google Chrome developer Eric Bidelman.

And of course, you can follow the updates on Google+, Facebook or Twitter.

You can go to the Santa’s Village site to watch the countdown.

Google also lets you send personalized holiday phone calls from Santa to your friends and family with Google Voice. You can learn more about that here.