Kwiry, a company built around text message reminders you send yourself, has upgraded its service today.
Added social networking elements as well as a focus on local searches and shopping should make the service more useful to users on a daily basis. This is especially true when you consider how the service operates.
Kwiry works by allowing users to text message the number 59479 (k-w-i-r-y) with anything they may want to remember later. Most people are going to use this to send information that they see while out in the area they live in. Perhaps they see a restaurant they want to try. Or maybe they see something they want to purchase but want to check the price of online. Text messaging either of these it would allow you to bring them up on your computer's web browser when you returned home. From there, with one click you could access results (based on your text message) for a local search or a shopping inquiry -- such as on Amazon, which has its own tab on Kwiry's main screen.
On the social end, users can now share their Kwirys with other friends on the service.
The most notable upgrade however, may be the ability to send voice-to-text messages via the voice conversion service Jott (our coverage).
If Kwiry can be thought of a bookmarking application of sorts for real life, speed, just as with bookmarking on the computer, is important. For most people, placing a phone call and speaking a reminder is still more simple than texting one. This would then be converted to text and sent to your Kwiry account for you to check later.
The San Francisco-based company launched in December (our coverage). It received $1 million in Series A funding from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in March of 2007.
As we mentioned previously, Kwiry competes with services such as OTAir or Primiro.