Hotmail Active Views Brings the Web to Your Inbox

As a self-confessed geek, and full time blogger, I tend to get a lot of parcels sent my way. Whether it’s kit that I’ve ordered myself for a new project, or products that have been sent over to me for review, I’ve got to know our local delivery drivers very well over the past few years.

Tracking these parcels through the various delivery networks can be a pain. You need to visit the courier’s website, type in that 52 character alphanumeric tracking code (usually several times as I always make a mistake), only to find that the parcel can’t be located. And when this is cool stuff on the way to you, you need to know where it is, and when it’s arriving – in real time if possible!

A new Hotmail feature called Active Views is designed to help with just this problem. It recognises specific links from associated partners – YouTube embedded video links, Flickr photo links and yes, courier tracking codes, and automatically embeds the linked content into the body of your email.

So the sender pastes in a link to a web service, and you get to see the content without the need to hit up the website – the web is brought to your inbox! For me, that means if I want to know where my parcel is, I just check my inbox.