Forget about remembering with Kwiry's SMS-based social search tool
Track stuff to lookup later with Kwiry.
It happens all the time. You're out somewhere and hear a good song on the radio, or want to jot down a book, movie or TV show you want to look up later. While many phones have built in voice note applications, the information you just (painstakingly) jotted down stays on the phone, and you might just forget about it. A company called Kwiry (like "query") is attempting to help you out with a new service that turns a brief text message into a full blown Web search that you can come back to when you're near a computer. Think of it like Twitter, but with a dash of Remember The Milk and Google.
The service cross checks each item that's been sent its way over a variety of search engines, including ones like Yelp, Yahoo Shopping, Google Maps, and iTunes to help you sniff out restaurants, products, addresses, and music albums. It's how the service intends to make its money, not only by using things like affiliate links, but also inserting sponsored advertising alongside the regular search results.
Just like Twitter, messages sent to Kwiry show up on a personal feed with a simple URL you can share with friends. To toggle a sent message as private, you can give each message a letter prefix by typing "p" in front of it. These will show up alongside the rest of your Kwiry messages, although they'll be denoted with a little private emblem that makes them easy to sort through. You can also set it up so just your friends will see your posts either as a default, or by using a yet another letter prefix in front of your message.
Like any good communication platform Kwiry's got a lot going for it with regards to integration with other social services. There are little modules for Netvibes, iGoogle, Pageflakes, and others, along with a Facebook app that links up with your Kwiry account to show off your latest queried items--although oddly missing is a way to send one from the app (which admittedly is kind of useless if you're on a computer in the first place). Twitter fans are also in luck, as you can simply add Kwiry's Twitter bot as a friend, and send it direct messages that accept the same privacy settings.
The one thing this service is missing is some visual style. I'm not saying it's ugly, but compared to entrances from other micropublishing services like Jaiku, Twitter, and Pownce, Kwiry falls a little on the plain side. The positive to that is that it's super fast, easy, and intuitive, which on the whole is far more important than looks alone. I've added it to my contact list for the time being, although it's worth noting that if your phone's got a data plan, you can probably continue to be selfish antisocial and look things up without sharing them with others.