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This just in: Santa Claus has his own iPhone app

Santa Claus has decided that he'd like all good little boys and girls to check in on what he's doing at the North Pole, so he's set up a special webcam network at his workshops. The webcams can only be viewed through a special iPhone app called SantaLive 2008. Starting on Thanksgiving Day and for 30 days after, you can get a daily update on your iPhone or iPod touch as Santa trains his elves to make toys, feeds Rudolph and the other reindeer, and prepares for worldwide toy deliveries during the evening of December 24th - 25th.

On Christmas Eve, he'll be providing a special report. Santa's cyber-helpers warn that the Christmas Eve report might take a while to download.

In an exclusive interview, Santa told TUAW that he's not much of an iPhone developer, so he had to outsource this work to The Casual Game Network to set up the webcams and make the system work. Since he has to pay these subcontractors, he's charging US$1.99 for SantaLive 2008 (click opens iTunes) through November 30th, after which time he's going to charge $2 more.

We'll be talking to the Easter Bunny's press manager soon to see if he's going to follow up with his own app.

Update: Comments suggest that the developer of SantaLive may have offered a cash bounty for five-star reviews on the App Store. While the Amazon bounty page is now offline, we have to say that if this was an actual strategy for harvesting positive feedback... well, someone's getting a lump of coal in his stocking.