If you've had a look at our front page at Get Somebody Now then you will have seen the item on Romania's arrival in force on the worldwide IT scene.

I can confirm the prominence of Romanian bidders on Elance and similar sites, and its certainly been an eyebrow raiser. For those of us old enough to remember the events of 1989 as they unfolded on our TV screens, and their historic significance to which we were witness and of which many of us were aware of at the time, the brave insurrection of the people of Timisoara during those days will forever be imprinted on our memories.

And now, 17 years on, we see the name Timisoara in a very different context. No doubt some of the insurrectionists would have had this kind of outcome in mind even then, if only in their wildest dreams, but few could have picked the city's rise to prominence as a real player in the global IT industry less than two decades later.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, here is a site from Timisoara itself that will allow you some appreciation of the significance behind this name and what it stands for. Try this link to CyberTim.

And if you would like a short summary of its contents, they are summed up in these words - 'Tot Banatu'i fruncea'

Our traffic stats have been going through the roof over the last week or two. Still modest, we would hate to exaggerate, but the progress is encouraging. Its nice to know someone is looking at this site out there in the emptiness of cyberspace. More than that its highly encouraging when we find that more people paid us a visit last Saturday than did the entire total of visitors for July.

Credit is mostly due to Margaret, for her innovative and at the same time methodical approach to the problem of traffic building. Lots more ideas are in the pipeline, so lets hope the stats continue their climb. 

Extensive research over the last week or so into the keywords issue has given us what we wanted, which was an idea of what it is that IT contractors look for on the net. What we were able to find out will help shape the kind of content we put up on Get Somebody Now over the next few weeks and months, so you will get an idea of that by following our output.

If it so happens you don't agree, you think we've got it wrong, then by now you should know what to do - contact us and give us your thoughts ! Look forward to hearing from you.

The last week has seen lots of linking activity on GSN. If you've been over to the Useful Links section, you will have noticed not only more outbound links, but lots of image links added to make the pages more visually interesting and usable at the same time. More links are on their way, the aim is to build these pages into a handy resource for ITers, a one stop shop for all your web-based needs.

Lots of inbound link activity has been going on too. Hopefully we'll be seeing the results of that soon with mroe traffic and registrations. The quicker we can establish the site's popularity then the quicker the online database will come through and the quicker we can get all of you your next clients ! Keep your ideas and suggestions coming in, don't be shy, its always good to hear from you.

Get Somebody Now uses Joomla as its Content Management System. As the content is starting to build on our site, the CMS is beginning to come into its own. Joomla is Open Source, and comes highly recommended, but I wondered what other web developers had to say about it, and more generally about the usefulness of a CMS. 

Readers may be interested to know that the initial web design for Get Somebody Now was done by Ray Blaber of Red Planet Productions . I can't say we've stayed faithfully with all aspects of Ray's design, but that is simply due to the fact that like most webmasters I like to play around with a site and in this case I just couldn't help myself.

If you would like to have a look at Ray's other work, follow the link here to his own site. As for me. I would like to thank Ray for his patience and assistance as we tried to sort out bugs and get the site working as we wanted. I am happy to recommend Ray to anyone else who needs some assistance with web development, in particular if you are going to use Joomla.

If you are an IT contractor, you can help us. We are trying to work out just what it is IT contractors search for most on the net. Looking over this site, you can see how we are trying to put content on that is of value and relevance to IT professionals. One of the areas we are less sure of is just what keywords we should focus on in our search engine submissions. The site is obviously for IT contractors and consultants, but that doesn't mean IT professionals go searching using 'IT contractors' as key words. Or do you ? 

Please let us know on this, as we are cranking up our Search Engine Optimisation efforts, which in turn will help us to market you and gain you your next client or project. Simply post a comment here on go to our feedback page. We look forward to hearing from you.

Regular visitors to Get Somebody Now will have noticed that we have simplified the registration process. We have done this to make it clearer that the site as it presently stands is not yet the online database we are developing. We felt it was important to clarify the point that registration with the site does not imply registration on the database, which does not as yet exist.

Those who register will gain access to our premium content, which is building up quite rapidly now. they will also receive our new e-Zine, which will give them further valuable content as well as regular updates on how the database is coming along. We will also advise of the marketing initiatives we are taking on your behalf. For more info on all this, comment here, or else register with GSN and get the e-Zine as it comes out. 

John Brady makes the case here for designing performance management into software from the start, using an argument that appeals to me as a former firefighter with the CFA.

My name is Davie, I am the one responsible for making GSN into something. The website around us is the product of my efforts, with the help of some others I will introduce to you. As you can see, GSN is a project that is very much under development, and as it takes shape over the next few weeks and months, I will tell the inside story behind GSN here, in this blog.