How to track shipments with Twitter

I’ve got a new 24-inch monitor on the way for the home office. It’s a Samsung display capable of 1900 x 1200 resolution, which I believe is the highest supported resolution for my UMPC. Currently I use a 1440 x 900 external display with the Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium.

Like any self-respecting gadget-geek, I like to track my purchases over the web, but I really don’t want to hit refresh for several days. I could track via e-mail, but that seems so 1999 to me. What about Twitter, since I’m constantly monitoring the conversations there? Sure enough, there’s a service aptly named "Track This" that supports FedEx, UPS, USPS and DHL. I just sent a direct message to the service through Twitter and included my tracking number and a short descriptive name. Now I’ll get a DM Tweet upon every status change as I await my monitor. Note: I don’t use SMS notifications with Twitter because I have a limited number of included messages… which go away on the 3G iPhone. Grr…

Thanks for the tip, Dave!