Lately Ive been working really hard on my diet and also ensuring that I get all of the nutrients that I need to maintain my lifestyle. My day is usually quite standard in terms of food intake, as Ive found that a monotomous routine is the best way to ensure i get everything i need everyday.

For example, I should be having 2 eggs for breakfast every day, and three protein shakes a day. Generally the rule of thumb is that for every pound you weigh you eat 1 gram of protein. I dont do too bad with this but, what supplements should you take to help you with your training?

Personally the only supplement I take consistently is protein. Over the years Ive come to realise that a lot of the supplements that are promoted are not essential and quite pointless if you dont know what they are for and dont take them at the right intervals and regularly.

When I am training hard, I do take tribilus terrestris, to help my testosterone levels, but apart from that I dont really supplement my diet.

You will find that different things will work for you to other people, so my advice would be to try things once and see how you feel and get on. A lot of people take and talk about creatine, which does nothing for me.

Maybe it will work for you, but I think for best results all thats really needed is a good balenced diet and additional protein through supplements.

I thought id drop a link for my presentation that I gave at the expo, something for you to peruse at your leisure if your bored or wanting to learn more about my thoughts on APIs.

amo_sokhi_developing-profitable-websites-with-mash-ups-and-apis

Last week I gave a couple of presentations at the A4U EXPO, the affiliate marketing conference held annually by the A4U Forum.

Suprisingly (given the vast developments being made in APIs) this was the first presentation of its kind, and the turn out for the main presentation was vast.

I rocked up 10 minutes before the presentation was due to begin, palms a bit sweaty, stomach slightly knotted, thinking about all the things that could go wrong. After checking my flies several times (hopefully discretely), I opened up the session and presented to the audience my take on APIs and what they mean for affiliate marketing and service providers alike.

The 20 minutes whizzed past and before i knew it I was listening to a round of applause as I left the podium and took my place on the panel.

This was a great experience for me, for which I can share my knowledge and thoughts.

What are my thoughts?

Well, I think that APIs will diversify the affiliates that promote advertisers, both in the way that they drive traffic (as their approach can be made more unique through innovative mashups) and in terms of the actual group that will be driving the traffic.

Becuase of the Service Orientated Nature of APIs and their owners, they lend themselves well to an industry that has traditionally been heavily reliant on the manual resource behind managing data. This is not just the management at client (affiliate) side on a day to day basis, but also the management earlier in the chain, at both the network and source itself potentially.

Facilitating a transition to delivering data through an API as supposed to datafeeds will remove the requiement for labour intensive data management, allowing affiliates to focus on the core elements of their strategies. This core strategy is ofcourse what will drive traffice and generate revenue, and therefore being able to focus more on this than the “how to” stages will provide obvious benefits for those involved.

Along with this, networks and service providers will be able to offer stronger products that further instil trust in their services. If networks are the sole party responsible for the management and upkeep of the data recieved from advertisers, they can commit to ensuring that data integrity is achieved, through both enhancement (refining the data as its recieved) and enrichment (adding data to fill in the gaps).

I think that with the increasing number of technology companies that are moving towards providing a service and faciliting this transition to APIs, there is a lot of diversification that will happen next year.

APIs are definately the future, and offer both affiliate and advertisers a lot more potential to streamline their online relationships. I think that the role that networks play will be crucial in helping to develop this, offering a variety of services that continue to drive ROI for both sides of the fence.

i train my chest hard every week. Its difficult when i dont have my buddy sam with me becuase i cant dumbbell press 40 kg (or heavier) as id like to. Weight training is achievable on your own in my opinion, but in order to maximise your works outs you definately need a training partner.

I find that without Sam, although my workouts are more concise and may be quicker, I dont necessarily push myself as much and he also helps to make sure that I am using the right techniques.

Moral of this post, if you want to push heavy weight and progress your training, make sure you have a partner that will support you.

Being 24 and very eager to finally move out from my parents, ive been trying to get on the property ladder for some time. Like most first time buyers, the typical obstacles in my way have been:

a. Deposit

b. being able to budget

c. trying not to cause WW3 with my asian parents (for wanting to leave the nest)

So with all this going on, I was ecstatic to hear that the banks are pulling pretty much all mortgages that provide any flexibility, and are positioning themselves to earn through low risk lending and propositions.

Sadly, I dont have a 30% deposit to play with, and im therefore a bit screwed. I wasnt just planning on this as a move out of home, but I was looking into property development as a channel in order to make some quick cash to invest into a more solid business venture. Capital is the key.

So what do I do next seeing as the market maybe like this for a while? To be honest, I havent got a frikkin clue.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Trust me, theres only so far you can go sharing a house with your folks….

Its funny that when I first heard the term “widget”, it was Jack Dee using the term trying to sell beer. A few years on, and the term widget is all over the digital space in a massive way. Browsers such as Opera have integrated a widgets gallery for their users to choose from, market places and affiliate networks are now offering variations of widgets to deliver incremental growth, and developers looking for that ‘mashup’ solution are now turning to widgets as a vehicle for innovation and achievement.

 Where is this going? From personal experiences, I understand the importance of widgets in the digital age, and what they can offer todays typical user. Todays user is much more online savvy, with the average young adult spending more social time online that watching tv. Social utilities such as the monster Facebook are still trying to understand how they can inject commercial opportunities within the space, without being obvious and overwhelming their users.

 Where do widgets fit into this?

My view is that widgets offer diversity in a rapidly growing environment, however marketers and digital inventory owners still have a long way to go before being able to understand exactly what value widgets can provide, and the breadth of commercial opportunities they can achieve through them. At the moment, I see widgets all over the digital space, however I am still to understand or read about widgets that have hit or exceeded performance targets in terms of revenue or lead generation.

 Maybe its just early days, or my expectations of widgets as a stand alone mechanism are too high, but if the number of times the term ‘widget’ appears in any digital space is anything to go by, I cant be alone in my thoughts….