Simon Sez Santa, Now in 2.0

Ah, the commercialization
of Christmas.

To make matters worse, there were actually folks in my neighborhood who put their holiday lights up -- and turned them on -- before Thanksgiving and one family that did it before Halloween!

Now, I'm going to surprise you, but I love it! For me, it's only a holiday of fun, food and exchanging presents with friends and family. It has no religious significance so I'm all for the commercialization of it. (Before you send the hate responses, I didn't say I'm an atheist; in fact, I'm very religious.)

I think I may have found the ultimate online toy, Simon Sez Santa. It’s an interactive video game on a website that was launched last year and it quickly became the surprise hit of 2005.

The company that made it has put out a 2.0 version for this year and it's even more fun with more commands.

It's free to play and that's the best thing. My kids can sit in front of the computer and play it for hours, or until I make them get up and go outside to play, which is very important.

Side bar: don't let your kids become one with the computer.

Back to Simon Sez Santa. This time last year, the word about Simon Sez Santa was spreading around the country like wildfire.

Some of the results from last year included:

- In its four weeks of operation, the website received more than 20 million hits

- It was named humorous website of the day by About.com
http://humor.about.com/b/a/225308.htm

- Nearly 10,000 downloads of the program occurred in first full week of website operation

- It was the featured site on http://beta.blogger.com/kim/Kim/Signature/06-SIG-1608%20Simon%20Sez%20Santa%202/www.coolsiteoftheday.com on Dec. 23rd (highest rated site of the month and second highest rated site of the year)

I expect the same will happen this year. To play Simon Sez Santa 2.0 go to this year’s website, http://www.simonsezsanta.com/.

Then come back here and tell me what you think.