Dear Readers,

The month of March represents not only the onset autumn, but was also the first month of the year in the Roman calendar. For this reason we will focus this newsletter on the topic of new beginnings.

So we present our revised Freelancer profile display. We also report about American lawyers who launch international attacks against Internet filesharing providers. This time it hit the founder of Megaupload who was even banned to personally use the Internet.

We also report about our new home-built content management system which helps us to speed-up our webservice. Our contractor´s article shows you how to conquer new markets through international marketing and our contractor joke tells you how a PA drives the new client mad.

As always, we wish you a busy and successful month.

The freelancer profiles have used the letters m / f (for male / female) to indicate the gender of the contractor. This indicator has now been replaced by the symbols ♂ / ♀. For example the profile header now shows 'Eventmanager $39 /hr • 1964 ♂' compared to previously 'Eventmanager $39 /hr • 1964 (m)'.

Our main reason for this adjustment is that our users did not always recognise what the letters stood for. Also the profile display is now more compact and less text-heavy which is especially important when accessing Australia Freelance Market from a smart phone.

Another advantage is that by using the the symbols all of our six international markets are now presented in a more uniform way. Also technical problems due to use of different letters in different languages are now avoided. For example there is a languages, where 'm' stands for female. If you know which language we refer to, please email the answer to info@australiafreelancemarket.com.au. One lucky winner will receive free usage of Australia Freelance Market for the entire year 2012.

The spectacular arrest of Kim Schmitz in New Zealand created a stir in the Internet scene. Now he has been released on bail, under the condition not to use the Internet and not to fly helicopters. "Ridiculous," says his lawyer. The court sees the danger that Schmitz could use the time on bail to reopen Megaupload in a country to which the U.S. authorities have no access.

So what will come next? Will memory cards and email also be prohibited as they allow the exchange of legal and illegal files?

So far, Australia Freelance Market was based on the Joomla 'CMS'. Standard content management systems like Joomla are not coping anymore with our sophisticated technical demands, as we have now six individual marketplaces (each with their own languages, contractors, categories and links).

Andreas Ehrlich from our IT department has therefore started the initiative to create our own 'CMS' which is specifically focusing on the needs of Australia Freelance Market. Our new IT-system is both based on our own developments, as well as on the so-called 'Zend'-framework.

Now that our migration to the new technology has been successfully completed, we can develop ourAustralia Freelance Market in a more flexible way. We also avoid system instabilities and malfunctions that result from the complexity of a traditional CMS implementation.

Another advantage is the better server utilisation. This reduces the time it takes to display complex search results on the browser to less than one second. Although most users will hardly feel this increase in speed, we can now serve more customers simultaneously, and we can improve our search engine rating further. Due to the lower server load, we also save electricity and reduce pollution.

Registered contractors are welcome to present their service in a short article in this Freelance-Market-News. In this issue, we would like to introduce you to our contractor no. 2782. The contractor has a degree in business administration and is also specialised in translations between English, Hungarian and German.
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With over 14 years of international experience in marketing, HR and copywriting, I am a reliable partner for companies wishing to establish or expand their own marketing, improve their corporate image or are interested in an international expansion.

I provide support in the areas of management consulting (e.g. in the strategic planning or site selection), marketing (market research, product planning and budgeting, media planning, trade shows, public relations, advertising and promotional campaigns), HR (recruitment and employee motivation). Also I compile texts for on- and off-line media and translate between ​​German, Hungarian and English.

I have excellent market knowledge and our local contacts in Hungary, Germany, Austria and Switzerland while I use my partner network to assist in other countries.
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The office manager asks the new freelance PA how things are going. "I understand pretty much everything here," the personal assistant says while putting some documents in the shredder, "except this funny machine here. Where is the tray for the photocopies to come-out?"