Zipwhip Review Textspresso Machine at CashSherpa.com

There’s a lot of innovation going on in the mobile industry, and even something as old as SMS, or text messages, can be improved in many varying ways. That’s the thought behind Zipwhip, a Seattle startup that invented a process where text messages could be sent and received from a phone number, and relayed to a computer, whether that be a desktop PC or a notebook, via the company text messaging cloud. The idea isn’t new, but this startup is going farther with actual implementations, along with cool examples of what’s possible by combining many different technologies.

The idea behind their technology is simple, and in many ways it’s nothing new. A text message is simply a small amount of text sent from any cellphone. It goes around the network and usually reaches another mobile somewhere else. But in the middle, providers can transmit the message over the Internet as well. And that’s what this company is doing. It’s also not the first company to do this. Twitter is perhaps the most popular example, where anyone can send a tweet from a cellphone by sending an SMS to a specific number, and it gets translated into a tweet. That’s the whole reason for their low character allowance. But in the case of Zipwhip, instead of just converting the message into text, they have an API where people can build applications on top of this.

One of their most striking examples is something they showed a local TV station, and that’s the textspresso machine.The idea is that they take a normal coffee maker, then add a series of robotic arms and motors, all connected to a computer. Then, using their platform, they connect the text messages to those motors. By sending an SMS to the textspresso, they can have it make a coffee of a certain type for them. It’s a pretty impressive concept, although they only built it as a demo for their offices. They published the plans for free, but to get it, you would have to build it. Still, it’s just one example of many things possible with their platforms. For now, it seems like they are still building much of the services offered, but anyone building apps around their platform can go to the site and register.

Zipwhip isn’t the first company to dabble with SMS and probably won’t be the last. The good thing about text messages, even though it’s an ancient technology, every phone supports it, and almost everybody carries a mobile phone with them now. So as far as the small company goes, they are likely in this for the long run. For four years they have been building their text messaging cloud, and will likely innovate even more in this field in the future.