We mentioned the new USPS mobile website last month which was pretty useful. What’s even better is that a USPS employee let us know that they are coming out with a BlackBerry app in December!
I am always shocked that there is no good app for tracking packages on your BlackBerry. You would think it would be a no brainer but nobody has really done it right. Viigo used to do it using SimpleTracking but it stopped working for me awhile ago.
The upcoming USPS BlackBerry app will have:
- Finding shipping status on packages and other mail
- Looking up ZIP Codes via GPS
- Finding Post Offices and Collection boxes via GPS.
Future updates will include:
- Sending real postcards through the mail
- Calculating rates
- Scheduling pickups
- Holding your mail when you go on vacation.
I am pretty impressed with USPS for being on the leading edge in this regard. Hopefully UPS and FedEx are taking note.
DavidB ( View Profile) Guru - Posts: 1751
Posted: November 4, 2009 at 10:41 AM EST
http://www.fedex.com/mobi seems to work ok for me. Kinda silly in my mind that fedex chooses not to go with the “sorta standard” m.fedex.com where you might THINK to look for it.
m.ups.com has worked fine when I needed it.
what I think would be really cool is if these companies had mobile apps that used the camera akin to their own handheld scanners (like edocrab does with product barcodes). why can’t i fire up a fedex app and point it at the receipt I have that has a barcode on it and it goes off and tracks that package? if I did a lot of fedex’ing as part of my job, how about being able to “shoot” from inside a BB app each package/envelope/whatever as I prep it and it stores the tracking number, uses push to get tracking updates automatically within the app, and every time I open the app I have easy one touch access to see the tracking on every package i’ve sent.
webchetan ( View Profile) Enthusiast - Posts: 280
Posted: November 4, 2009 at 12:53 PM EST
I agree with DavidB!
Ronen Halevy ( View Profile) Senior admin - Posts: 5298
Posted: November 4, 2009 at 12:55 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9700
Yeah that would be pretty cool…
brianb Not Registered
Posted: November 5, 2009 at 1:18 PM EST
I think David is on to something. One heck of an idea.
DavidB ( View Profile) Guru - Posts: 1751
Posted: November 5, 2009 at 1:38 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9630
LOL! If only I knew how to code, I would write that app! And only for BlackBerry.