A few updates in the last couple of days worth noticing.
- Moving multiple spurls: I finally got around doing this. Should have been done ages ago. There is now a checkbox in front of every entry in the lists on the My Spurls page. Check the appropriate boxes, select the category these entries should be moved to in the dropdown box at the bottom of the list and click “Move”. As easy as that. I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a major usability enhancement.
- Faster recommendations and now time sensitive: The recommendations now take into account that your interests may be changing over time and bases the recommendations more on the last things users have added. The recommendations are also faster now, but still need some work on that front, especially for users with a lot of spurls. I’m becoming happier with the quality of the recommendations but there is still a list of improvements that I think will make them more relevant. The most involved of you will notice that there is a new scale of measurements for the recommendations, ranging from 1-5, where 1 is a vague connection and 5 a very strong one. Obviously the longer the period you choose for your recommendations, the more relevant matches you are likely to get.
- Recommendations in Spurl bar: You can now access your recommendations on a new tab in the Spurl bar. The recommendations there are additions from the last week. They will therefore be gradually changing, so you won’t miss things that Spurl thinks you will find interesting.
- Speed improvements: I spent quite some time during the week on optimizing various things. The database has been growing really fast over the past two weeks and that resulted in some things – especially database queries – becoming quite slow. I’ve been focusing on the most used things, such as the front page, and the tabs on the Spurl bar and am working my way through other, less used parts of the system.
As for the practical part, Spurl now has Terms of Use and a Privacy Policy. I don’t think there will be any surprises there, it’s basically: We’ll be good to you and you should be good to us 
The main points are:
- We don’t collect personally identifiable information and we’re not interested in it.
- We use cookies to make the service more user friendly, nothing is stored there other than a few preferences and an id to recognize a revisiting registered user.
- We may study collective trends and information in the database. Such studies will not involve the trends of individual users and will only be used in an aggregated way. And btw. anything that is marked “private” will be left out of any such studies, and is for your eyes only.
- You’re not allowed to store illegal material. If we become aware of such data, it will be deleted immediately.
- Don’t try anything stupid.
Even though it doesn’t say in the ToU or PP, I want to emphasize that Spurl is and will always be free of charge and free of ads for personal use. See the FAQ for details
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