I don’t know about you, but I remember a time where you couldn’t track a package from Fed Ex or UPS online. No, in my day, if you expected a package from Fed Ex, then you waited for it, just like everyone else.
FedEx has stepped up their tracking game with Senseaware, a drop-in sensor for packages that monitors everything.
This device is about the size of a BlackBerry, and it tracks everything like temperature, exact location, and whether or not it has been opened or exposed to light. It even has a built-in accelerometer so it will detect when it has been dropped.
That’s not bad, but this isn’t for the average consumer’s packages. No, this is for those shipments of human organs and other supplies that are a matter of life and death. The Senseaware costs about $120, which is probably not something that the average consumer isn’t going to pay for just to ship their average stuff.
However, I think that this just the beginning. I mean, remember when digital cameras cost hundreds of dollars, and now they are so cheap that one could afford a digital camera with a child’s allowance?
In other words, soon every package will have a tracker that is as accurate as the Senseaware, and we’ll always know exactly where our packages are in mid-trip, and we’ll know if they have been dropped. Perhaps that is a little too meticulous of a world to live in.
Published on April 03, 2010
