ReadWriteWeb

Kwiry, a startup that built all kinds of functionality on top of SMS, emailed users this afternoon to announce that the company is giving up the ghost and it's time to get your data out. It's really a shame but we have to wonder - did this happen because people don't really want anything complex from their short messaging service?

I've enjoyed using Kwiry to text myself reminders and then subscribe to the RSS feed of items I sent in my Netvibes dashboard. When the service first launched it sent you an email with search results for the text of reminders you sent yourself by SMS. You could add movies to your Netflix queue using Kwiry and SMS. Other people did all kinds of things with it, like use it to turn off their computers remotely. In the end, it looks like only a few thousand people probably used the service regularly at all.

As the mobile handset continues to move from being one of our many computing platforms to becoming our primary platform, we want to be able to do more and more with it. We want to send messages with it, carry music on it, record video with it, and use it as a remote control for our lives. It's all about immediate gratification and the power to get things done wherever and whenever you have the ability to do so.

Kwiry - an SMS-based service designed to simplify mobile tasks - has just announced a feature that plays right into that mindset: allowing you to control your TiVo remotely via SMS.