Maybe I was really starving the night I did this, or maybe my life is just pathetic but, Dominos Pizza should win an award for this. I have never been more excited about food then I was at the moment I had successfully ordered my pizza and was presented with it's status from pizza birth to under 30 minute delivery....

If you haven't experienced this yet, once you order your pizza you are presented with this little flash widget that gives you near real time information on what is happening with your pizza. I found myself staring at this thing for possibly the whole process, I even learned the names of the person who prepared the pizza, and the driver. It wasn't but 10 minutes after the widget said it was out for delivery that it arrived at my door. And sure enough the person who brought it was indeed named what the widget had claimed. That was reason enough for me to believe that this was not just smoke and mirrors but a real feedback mechanism.

It will be interesting to see if this kind of thing takes off. I can imagine several fun applications for this kind of thing.

I often consider newegg.com to be the Dominos of hardware. They have a good reputation for amazingly fast turnaround times. I have ordered stuff from there and deleivery times have alwasy surpassed expectations. It would be awesome to see a similar widget for that.

Something to the effect of...

1. Your order has been charged
2. Derek is in the wharehouse finding your new Motherboard
3. Derek is now packing your motherboard for shipping
4. Connie is now manifesting your order, your tracking # is ...
5. Dan from UPS has picked up your order
6. Dan has arrived at the St. Louis hub...
7. ...
8. Joe from UPS Cincinnati has checked in your package and put it on the truck for delivery.
9. Jerry is driving to your house.
10. Jerry is knocking on your door GO GET YOUR MOTHERBOARD!!!!

I can only imagine that from a businesses point of view, the effort put in to make this work would pay off big time as far as customer loyalty goes. By providing such a mechanism, you are establishing a more meaningful relationship with your customer, which I can only imagine helps build that thing called brand loyalty.

So, newegg? Amazon? all my other favorite retailers, if you're reading this. Get your dev's on this pronto.