With the hundreds of beta users and thousands of contacts added during beta1, things were getting slow when managing contacts.

The search and tag selection were especially below the acceptable threshold.

So first we built a full Javascript user interface using Google Gears that’s as fast as a desktop application. It also allows you to view your contacts when offline; this will be the base for the future Ofuz Desktop.

To enable Google Gears to manage your Ofuz contacts, go into Settings, choose the Google Gears tab, and then turn it on.

But Gears is not yet available for everyone — like on my Linux 64b desktop.

Then, last week we rewrote the standard web-based version of the contact management section. This added infinite scrolling, so it’s a great performance feature. It initially loads just the first 50 contacts and as you scroll down it loads more contacts until it reaches the end.

Lastly, we moved Ofuz to new hardware servers in a new cloud environment based on Open Source technologies. The result is a 10x performance improvement in Ofuz contact management. Now, even with thousands of contacts the user interface is extremely responsive.

Give us your feedback and let us know how fast it runs for you.