Squirl is a web site for collectors where you can organize your collections, share them, and meet fellow collectors.

Yes, up to a limit. If you want to store more than 200 items, or have more than three collections, we ask you to pay a modest annual fee.

Free accounts let you store up to 200 items in up to three collections. Plus accounts allow 5,000 items and unlimited collections, as well as other benefits like no ads. You can learn more about pricing and features on the plans page.

First, sign up for an account. Once you've received your confirmation email and clicked on the link, you'll be prompted to create your first collection, and then to add items to it. More details are in our quick start guide.

Squirl works with Internet Explorer 6 and up, Firefox 1.0 and up, and Safari. It might work on other modern browsers, but these are the ones we've tested and that we support.

First, please set your email client to allow messages from 'squirl.info', and check to make sure the confirmation email wasn't mistakenly marked as junk mail. If you still haven't received your confirmation within an hour of signing up, please email us at help@squirl.info, and we'll see what's up.

Tags are bits of descriptive information -- usually a single word or short phrase -- that a user can add to a Squirl item to help organize their items and collections. Adding tags to your items can facilitate searches, and also provide another method of organizing your stuff. One potential use is as an informal alternative to creating new collections. Squirl lets you enter multiple tags at once by separating them with commas (ie, entering "Graceland, King, Elvis Presley" would create three tags). More info in the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags.

RSS is an easy way to keep track of changing web content. It stands for “Rich Site Summary,” though many people say it stands for "Real Simple Syndication" (and it's often also referred to as a "feed"). You can RSS things like news, blogs, weather reports, stock quotes, and other types of web content where you might want to be notified of regular changes.

On Squirl, you can RSS your Messages, your (and others') collections, Recent Comments, searches, and the Squirl Blog, and receive updates on when new material is added to those sections. Squirl provides links to make it easier to connect RSS to your 'My Yahoo' page, your Google homepage, and other services that can link to RSS feeds. For more information, try Wikipedia's entry for RSS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29.

If you want to display recent items you've added to your collections on your blog, Squirl can generate a blog widget for you. Log in to Squirl, click on the 'Tools' link at the bottom of every page, and follow the instructions.

Yes, you can import data from Excel, Google Spreadsheets, or any other data source that lets you export to the CSV format. When you're logged in, there is a 'Tools' link at the bottom of every page. Click on it, and you'll find a page explaining how.

Yes, you can export all your data as comma-separated files (CSV format). When you're logged in, there is a 'Tools' link at the bottom of every page. Click on it, and you'll find a page explaining how.

To edit your profile, log in to your Squirl account, then click on 'My Profile' in the top navigation. The main page lets you make your profile public or private, upload an image of yourself, and control what your profile looks like. The 'Contact Preferences' tab lets you control how and when you're notified of about messages and comments on Squirl. The 'Password' tab lets you reset your password.

Yes. Log in to Squirl, click on 'My Profile' in the top navigation and select 'private' in the 'Profile Privacy' section at the top of the page.

When you first create a collection, you're asked if you want that collection to be public or private (the default setting is public). If you choose to make a collection public it will be visible on your profile (unless you've set your profile itself to ‘private’), and available via the Squirl search engine. You can change the settings on your collections at any time. If you change a collection setting from ‘public’ to ‘private’, it will cease to appear on your profile, the url for that collection will no longer function for anyone but you (others will see a ‘sorry, unavailable’ message), and items in that collection will cease show up in Squirl search engine results.

Squirl won't give or sell your email to anyone without your express permission, and we take stringent steps to protect your email address, as well as other information you entrust with us. Our privacy policy gives more details.

We only send our newsletter to people who checked the little 'subscribe' box when they signed up. To unsubscribe at any time, log in to Squirl and go to ‘My Profile’, then click on the ‘Contact Preferences’ tab. There's an option there to unsubscribe. If you have any trouble, please email help@squirl.info and we'll help.

You do. Squirl members retain full ownership and rights to the images they upload, but by the act of uploading, they allow Squirl to use them. Please see our terms of service for more details.

If a Squirl user has chosen to make their profile public, you can view it by clicking on their username, which will be a blue link. You can then view any of their public collections from their profile page. Links to a user's public collection also appear next to a user's avatar (picture) on certain pages, such as the Most Recent Members page.

Go to a member's profile (by clicking on his/her name) and click on the "Add as a friend" link. You'll then be automatically taken to your Messages area where you can fill out a short invite to that member. The member will receive your invite, and will be able to choose to a) accept your invitation, b) accept your invitation *and* add you as their friend, or c) decline your invitation.

Log in to Squirl and click on the People link at the top of any page. Then click on the Friends tab, and then the trash icon next to the person you want to drop as a friend.

You can block anyone from sending you messages, making friends with you, or commenting on your collections. Click on the My Profile link at the top of any page, then the Contact Preferences tab. You will see a Block List at the bottom of this form. Put any Squirl member's user name here (separate multiple user names with commas), and once you submit the form, they'll be blocked. In addition to preventing messages, comments and friending, blocking a user removes you from their friend list if you're on it, and prevents them from viewing your profile. When you block someone, the person being blocked will not be notified that you've done so.

You can use your email address to retrieve your password here. If you no longer have access to that email address, or can't get access for any reason, please email help@squirl.info

To change your password, log in to Squirl, click on 'My Profile' in the top navigation, click on the 'Password' tab, and follow the instructions.

To change the email address you have registered with us, log in to Squirl, click on 'My Profile' in the top navigation, click on the 'Contact Preferences' tab, use the form to update your email, and click 'Save Changes'.

Yes, free accounts can have up to three collections. You can upgrade to a Plus Plan for unlimited collections.

You can make a collection private from two places. You can click on 'My Collections', then click on the icon for the collection that you want to make private, then click on the 'Edit' icon to right of the collection's name. Alternatively, the privacy of all your collecions can be controlled from 'My Profile'.

On a collection page, click on the link of the item you want to edit. If you own the item, you should see an 'Edit' link above and to the left of the item's name. Clicking that will take you to a form where you can edit the image and information for the item.

Collection pages have a 'Share' link to the right of the collection's name, while item pages have a 'Share' link on the left, above the item's name. Click on either, and you get a form that lets you send an email sharing the Collection or Item.

Books, Music, Movies and Video Games can be imported from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.co.jp. In a collection, click 'Add Item', then select an Amazon-importable item. On the 'Add From' page choose 'Amazon.com' as the source of the item your adding, then use the search box provided to get a list of possible items to import. On the search results page, clicking 'Import' next to an item will import it directly into your collection, while clicking 'Import & Edit will import the item's information into an editable form, so you can edit the information being imported.

You can remove an item from a collection two ways. First is to go to the page of the item itself, and click on 'Delete' in the nav bar above the item. Once you do that, you'll be given the option to completely remove the item, or to just remove it from the collection, but leave it in your master library.

You can also delete one or more items at a time from the "list view" of a collection. In list view, check the box to the left of the item you want to delete, then click 'DELETE' at the bottom of the list, and select if you want to delete the item(s) completely, or just remove them from this collection (and leave in the master library).

Squirl supports the following image file types: JPEGs, GIFs, and PNGs. Right now the size limit for images uploaded to Squirl is 1.5 MB. All images uploaded to Squirl are resized by the system to be no wider than 480 pixels, so if you're resizing them yourself, that's a good width to set them to.

This is called a moiré pattern, and is sometimes caused by scanning printed images. In particular moiré patterns often occur when scanning newspapers, magazines, postcards, or other mechanically reproduced images.

They can sometimes be reduced or eliminated by scanning the image at a larger-than-intended size, and resizing it down to the size you want. Here are a few links that might also help:

http://www.oberonplace.com/dtp/moire/index.htm (somewhat technical)
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/apsremovemoire.htm
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=224671

As of October 2006, we don't support any kind of sales, auctions, or other types of transactions between Squirl users. If you make any kind of arrangements for such transactions with people you meet on Squirl, or while using Squirl, we can't assume any responsibility for it. We strongly recommend the use of third-party escrow services, especially for larger transactions. Caveat emptor.

Do feel free to include links to your personal store site, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo!, or other legitimate ecommerce site. A good place to put such a link is on your profile, where there's a field for it.

To ensure privacy, Squirl lets you hide an item's price and value. By default these values are set to be hidden. To show them, go to the main page for your item, click on 'Edit' above the item's name, click 'More Fields' to display the price and value fields, then click the 'show' button next to field you want to have displayed.