I don’t know how many people are like me (I may just be crazy) but whenever I order something I like to keep a track of it via some form of tracking page. Doesn’t sound too bad so far, but things can be exponentially worse if you’ve ordered from a retailer from overseas and have to track your package across several continents.

If I’m particularly worried about the delivery date because I’ll have to book a day off work (grrr) or if I’m just excited about my package arriving in general (Mac Pro mmm) I usually have to boot up a computer, grab the tracking number from my email, and scoot on over to the relevant tracking site. Not only is this a pain in the A but it’s a waste of electricity, time and can wear out your keyboard if you’re checking every-hour-on-the-hour for several weeks (Ok, maybe that is excessive!)

Luckily, whilst browsing the net I remembered an old software widget that I used to use back in my uni days (circa 2003) to track packages that I needed to send home

(developer’s site link:http://junecloud.com/software/mac/delivery-status.html)

Delivery status is a tiny little OS X widget (FREE) from June Cloud that can track multiple items across a plethora of couriers, for a wide variety of countries. They even do Royal Mail recording which is good considering they’re a US company.

…but this involves a computer? What’s the benefit?

Well, if you’re the owner of an iPhone / iPod Touch running the latest Apple 2.0 software you can now get a tie-in program from June Cloud called Delivery Status Touch! Not bad!!

(app store link: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290986013&mt=8)

There’s a small $1.19 fee involved, but considering the time it’ll save you (not to mention the hassle) you can now take your obsession of package-tracking to a whole new (mobile) level. Just whack in the tracking numbers, create an Alias, for example you could add a UPS delivery called “Mac Pro” to differentiate between say, a software delivery from UPS and so you don’t have to muck around memorising if 1Z716Z is the package you want, or if it’s really 1Z717G.

Apart from the bog standard “delivered” or “en route” message Delivery Status Touch can actually show up to 2 other levels of detail, each giving you more data than the initial level (the third state can take you direct to the courier’s site and show you a map if they support GPS tracking).

To top it all off, both the desktop widget and the iPhone / iPod app can be synced allowing easy management of your packages, which helps immensly considering that none of the Apple devices currently have any form of copy and paste.

If you’re the happy / unhappy user of this app let us know.. I for one think it has to be one of the better apps I’ve bought from iTunes, and will aid in future spending sprees when the courier decides to leave my stuff in the shed!!