While tracking your UPS or Fedex packages via URL (like this):
Code:
http://www.fedex.com/Tracking?tracknumbers=yourtrackingnumberhere
is fairly convenient, it strikes me that it shouldn't be necessary to request the entire page when all you need is the essential information. I suppose if there were a Sherlock plugin for Fedex/UPS (or if you use a Dashboard widget like Package Tracker from Monkey Business Labs), it goes another step further by pulling only a small subset of that data (perhaps that would be classified as a web services approach?).
I wonder if the next logical step in the evolution would be a real-time package tracker (perhaps using AJAX techniques or something similar) that would send very-low-bandwidth requests every few minutes, and only display data when there's been a change. That way, those who are obsessive about their packages could relax a little, knowing that, like the departure/arrival board at a train station or airport, the data remains static until there's a change, and you know about the change as soon as it is posted.
Any ideas how this might be achieved? Does such a tool already exist?
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