I know I am not going to recieve my Acer Ferrari until at least Thursday NZ time as there are no deliveries on weekends, Monday and Tuesday are public holidays and DHL Express are not doing any deliveries Wednesday due to "lack of demand".
However I was thinking about the mechanisims available to track packages with DHL (from experience UPS and FedEx are similar). The most common method is to visit the webiste and enter in you tracking number and you get a summary of where the package is now and all the points it has passed through on the way. I might just be getting picky, but to me that just seems sooooo 2002. I mean having to visit a website and enter a code every time I want an update? DHL offer email tracking and you would think that this would update you when the package status changes, but it does not. You send an email and you get an email back with it's current status. You want an update you have to send another email.
I would much rather "Subscribe" to a package and be notified each time the status changes. And what is the perfect technology to facilitate this? RSS feeds.
So I did a little googling and guess what... I'm not the first person to think of this. In fact I found several people who had already coded up web services to generate a feed based on a tracking number. I tried several, but finally settled on isnoop.net's rather cool Package Tracking With Google Maps and RSS
Basically you enter in a UPS, FedEx, USPS or DHL tracking number and you will get the same summary you get via the vendor's site, the path and location of the package shown on a map and an RSS feed to track the continued journey of the package. Very cool.
