This week I made it into the Hammersmith & Fulham News, a fortnightly home-delivered publication for people living in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

It's a short and sweet story about WorkBidder and its service... unfortunately the author put the URL as .com rather than .co.uk for the UK.

As they say, any press is better than no press.

A while back you may remember I worked on the movie, The Passion, a production for BBC and HBO.

Last night it was broadcast on BBC1 and yes, I was seen quite a bit hiding in the shadows.

Actually you can see more about the production here where you'll also see a photograph of me and my 'brothers'.

My character was the disciple Simon who is second from the right on the link.

WorkBidder is a certified success and is now planning on franchising in other countries.

Everything is ready to go and in return you'll have on your side an excellent website with continual improvements to the site.

You'll also be tapping into a business which has great earning potential in a new market which allows workers to find homeowners.

If this is something which interests you then please get in touch by clicking on the 'Contact' button.

There's some big changes which go live tomorrow on the 1st February, 2008.

A brand new service called "Have Them Call Me" will be launched which will make it much more simple to get hold of people in the building and trades industry.

Currently workers reply to project owners via the website which is excellent for particular types of work however for jobs where the worker needs to be on location to give a quote then it isn't enough.

The "Have Them Call Me" service allows project owners to post a job and instead have workers call them back. Project owners need to keep in mind that workers are paying for these leads (pay-per-lead system) so they should only use this service if they want people to phone them to receive quotes on location and have every intention on getting the job completed. Otherwise it would better to stick to the Online Messaging service whereby workers don't pay for each lead.

Last night I went to the press evening of the musical Avenue Q at the Noel Coward theatre in the West End.

It was a very good laugh and worth seeing if you are up for a bit of adult puppet action crossed with a Bridget Jones style love story to boot.

Afterwards the press were invited to meet the cast (puppets and their puppeteers) over drinks and canapes. Below you'll see a photograph of Rod the puppet who came out of the closet, his puppeteer and myself.

Where are my manners I ask myself. It's January 19th and I haven't even wished you all a happy new year yet. So here goes, Happy New Year from London!

Let's hope we all have a super 2008, for all of us and our families.

More from me later :-)

Well, funding time has arrived and I'm happy with the progress of the WorkBidder website and it's now time to take the next step forward.

Why? WorkBidder has reached as far as it can get without marketing, advertising and lots of cash.

In the next few weeks leading up to Christmas I'll be actively looking for business investors.

What will change? More jobs, more workers and more successful connections.

Finally the new design has been launched and the best way to see it is to go to http://www.workbidder.co.uk and see for yourself. Actually, this page looks different too - I'm sure you'd have noticed that if you're a regular.

So many sleepless nights and many sleepless days and it's all been put together. Last night I slept about 2 hours so hopefully I'll get some proper sleep tonight. We shall see.

So what are the changes in the new design?

The My Account page now has feeds to show you what you're up to. It includes projects you've posted, bids you've received, jobs invitations you've received, projects you've bid on and much more. It also includes easy access to your message inbox and sent items.

Finding a worker has also been made easier, all you need to do is type in what type of worker you need and the town.

It is now easier for workers to recognise quickly whether a job has already been taken, when the bidding closes and how many bids have already been placed.

A little extra I added was the video on the front page which I hope to change from time to time.

There are many, many more changes but the best way to see them is to discover them yourself.

I hope everyone find the new changes really useful - but please remember, they'll be many more changes over the next few weeks and your help is always appreciated as it.

As most of you don't know, when I'm not working on the WorkBidder website I have to scrape some pennies together so I do a bit of work which pays me money.

I started about a year ago working in film and TV and have worked on a few movies and TV programmes. WorkBidder allows me to work strange hours and film and TV demands it so the two fit right into each other.

During September and part of October I worked on a movie in Morocco which will be shown on UK television during Easter 2008.

I played the part of Simon, one of Jesus' disciples and here's a link to the actual movie - The Passion on IMDB.

I managed to work on the movie and in my spare time (usually lots of hours during the night and on days off) kept the site up to date and worked on new features.

The first photograph is of me with my first beard ever. It took me 5 blades to shave it off - next time I'll know better and go to the barber.

The second photograph was taken on a location not far from Ouarzazate and includes Joseph Mawle (Jesus), Paul Nicholls (Judas), Dean Lennox Kelly, Jamie Sives (John) and Daniel Evans (Matthew). Other actors on the film were James Nesbitt, John Lynch and someone who I didn't know who was - Dennis Lawson. I think he forgives me.

The last photograph is one which was taken yesterday of me and Alex Walkinshaw on the set of The Bill.

In the future when I meet new actors on set I think I'll ask them about how they go about getting their handiwork completed as like most people they too don't have enough hours in the day. So if I'm aware of who I'll be working with I'll drop a message on here and if you have any questions you'd like me to ask I'll try to get some answers.

And for those of you who watched The Peter Serafinowicz Show you may have seen a glimpse of me on episode 4 as one of the builders. I was the guy who got a kiss from the star who then decided to put his hand in my back pocket.

I walk on to the screen after 59 seconds in the jeans, light blue top and, of course yellow safety helmet. I am on screen again for the finale (!) at 1 min 51 seconds.

The clip is embedded below.

We're about to launch a brand spanking new website design. It'll be more useful, more intuitive and you'll be loving it.

With it I'd like to add both worker and project owner testimonials. If you have had a wonderful experience with the site I'd love to hear about it. If you could write about 20 words about how it's helped you I can put it up on the front page.

Well, my big trip is now over - it's been good but also hectic

I'm now properly back in the UK and will now look for some office space for WorkBidder.

In the next few weeks I'm going to interview a few workers in fields which haven't as yet gotten much exposure on WorkBidder. If you feel your field hasn't had many or even any jobs on the site then please get in touch and I'll see how I can help.

Wow, it's done and it's live on the site.

It's been known for sometime that certain jobs are very difficult to quote for without prior knowledge of the site where the job needs to be completed.

Chatting back and forth on the project pages is great for the smaller jobs and gives the worker a good idea about what the job entails however with larger jobs it becomes more complicated as there are more variables.

To get around this I've now created a different method house owners can select to get quotes as well as keeping the usual method. Now if you have a complicated job and need someone to come around and give you a quote on-site then you can select the TENDERING option instead of the FREE-BIDDING option. This way it'll allow you to suggest time slots when workers can come to your place. This should speed up the process for bigger jobs and also ensure that only workers with free time will be able to see your job. It'll save you and the worker time.

Finally I've arrived in Perth, Western Ausralia where I'll continue working on WorkBidder and meeting up with a few Aussies to chat about the site. I'll be here until the end of April and then will shoot off to Melbourne for a few days and then on to Sydney for a few more. Of course I'll be checking out the local beach conditions and probably try out a few of the local ales in my spare time. It's really not that bad working on the road.

Well, I'm on the road this week and where I am is very nice and warm - obviously I'm not in the UK.

I remember the days of old when I travelled around Europe and never had a mobile phone and it was also before the time when Joe Bloggs had an email address and most certainly hadn't heard of the internet either.

I met so many wonderful people on my travels but so many of them now I am not in contact with due to people moving houses, changing phone numbers etc. If only I had email in those days. I've tracked some people down on Google but most of the people would be impossible to find.

We are so privileged to live in this day and age where communication is so easy, I get to be in far away places and still work day to day just as I do in London but in a different timezone.

WorkBidder has gotten to the stage where financial investment is needed to take it to the next level.

I've thought about The Dragons and other routes but I believe the best type of investors are those who are in the industry and can see the potential how a service like WorkBidder can benefit the community.

If anyone has any good ideas about the direction you think I should take then I'd be very grateful to hear from you.

Just click on the Contact link in the navigation menu to send me a message.

Today is a new beginning as papers have been signed for a company in South African to franchise WorkBidder over there.

While temperatures may be opposite and a bbq is known as braai - the basic principle of WorkBidder stay the same no matter where it gets launched.

Good luck with everything Ricardo, I'm sure pulling together we'll make a success of it in SA.

So if South Africa is where you reside and you are looking for building quotes, plumbing quotes or any other tradespeople then take a look at http://www.workbidder.co.za.

For sometime now I've thought about creating my own viral marketing campaign to help spread the word about WorkBidder. Over the weekend I found I had an hour or so to kill so got a start on it.

What I haven't done is come up with the final product just yet but this will give you an idea of what i've created so far:

For those who are still unsure what viral marketing is exactly, here's a passage from Wikipedia:

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can often be word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it can harness the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

So if you like this video then please send your friends the link below so they can check it out online.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10KYqboD1KM

However, please remember this is a work in progress and what I'm going to add this week is the instructions of how to actually do what is in the video.

Coming from an IT background I thought it only fair to start off the WorkBidder blog with the subject of 'Hello World!'.

For those not in the know, Wikipedia says:

A "hello world" program is a software program that prints out "Hello world!" on a display device. It is used in many introductory tutorials for teaching a programming language.

It had to happen, WorkBidder had to finally get a blog. I'm going to keep it fairly open so it could might supply you with news about website changes, help on how to use the site to your best advantage and there'll also be articles by qualified individuals who may give you some inspiration on your home improvements.

This also will be an account of the day to day occurrences in my life, trying to run my own business and make a success out of it.

To end this first posting by me I should quickly introduce myself. I was born Stuart Kidd, I'm 5'10", 75kg (on average) and prefer to sleep on my back. I launched this website last year but am now working on it full-time as well as doing a couple of other things in my spare time to bring some money in, most notably working as a Background Artiste, commonly known as an Extra, recently brought to light by comedian Ricky Gervais.

Today I worked the morning on a movie called Inkheart starring Dame Helen Mirren, the Essex girl and successful movie star. Helen stood in front of me and the rest of the cast and crew, saying a short speech about how she was happy to be back working on what she enjoys best. I even saw her Oscar. She was given a huge cake which she cut and was available to all. I don't like cake. I wonder if anyone else noticed the front page headline "Burger Queen" in one of yesterday's tabloids with a photograph of her tucking into a chunky burger.

I should have taken a photograph of her munching on her cake.