The Truth About Supplements is a well informed, well researched report on supplements by a fitness instructor called Mark Ottobre. He has seen first hand which supplements work with your body building and which work against it.

The focus of the report is on bodybuilding but if you take any health supplements – such as amino acid supplements – then it’s an eye opening read. There’s a sample chapter available for free so that you can check both the style and the range of information. The free chapter goes into depth on protein supplements and lists out both essential and non-essential amino acids that you may well have encountered on an ingredients list and wondered what they were.

The main report goes into much more detail and also includes Mark’s “Champions Diet” which has been used by a number of top body builders, some of whom are featured on the main page of the Truth about Supplements site.

Even if you don’t want to become a top body builder, it pays to know the effects of the supplements that you are ingesting. Not all supplements are created equal and not all of them help everyone in the same way. This report will help to empower you. And if you’re a cynic who doesn’t often believe advertising hype, it will help you cut through the sales gimmicks that are used to trigger you into buying supplements you either don’t want or don’t need.

Chances are even your own personal trainer doesn’t know much of what’s discussed in this report. So if they have been recommending supplements for you, the report is an easy and informed “second opinion” that you can use before you spend lots of money on a variety of supplements that won’t help you in your fitness goals.

You can check out more about the Truth About Supplements here.

If your hotel has more than a handful of rooms, it pays to use some kind of hotel reservation software. But which program to choose? After all, there are plenty on the market and they all claim to be the best.

Reservation Master has been designed to allow you to check out whether it will meet your needs with a no obligation 30 day trial. That’s plenty of time to look it over and see whether it works better than you existing system.

Reservation Master shows your current bookings, so you can see at a glance which rooms are available.

When you first run the program, you’ll want to configure it for your hotel. The company details section is used to produce invoices for your guests. Tax codes are fully configurable so, unlike many of its competitors, this program will work anywhere in the world. You’ll probably only set up your rooms once unless you’ve just refurbished your hotel but they are all configurable.

The room and rates tab allows you to set your rack rates for each room. There’s also space to charge for an extra child or adult in the room. And the reservation software will handle weekly and monthly prices as well if you want it to. There is also the possibility of adding package deals, such as weekend specials.

Making a new booking is easy – just click the “new” button and the booking screen pops up:

The software automatically detects where you are, which is why the date format in the above screen shot is in the UK day-month-year format and the currency is set to British Pounds. This will change depending on where you are in the world without any need for you to manually change it.

You can also set different user settings so that your reception staff don’t have access to all the settings of the software, only the parts they need to use.

As well as producing invoices for your hotel guests, there are numerous reports to allow you to keep on top of your business. These include a sheet for today’s expected arrivals, a housekeeping list so you know which rooms need attention, occupancy levels and much more. You can even use the software to keep track of stock, so if you have a mini bar in your rooms for example, you can keep on top of your stock levels for this.

Overall, Reservation Master is easy to use. Chances are that you’ll pick up most of the features in just a few minutes and anything that isn’t clear on first sight is explained in the help file.

Best of all, you don’t need to decide right away. Because the software has a try-before-you-buy option, you can give it a thorough testing for 30 days before deciding to go ahead and buy it.

Get your copy of Reservation Master Hotel Reservation Software here.

Parking spaces can be difficult to find, especially in larger towns and cities.

What’s even more frustrating is that a lot of houses have empty driveways during the day as the owner has driven their car to work.

Which is where the web comes into its own – matching up empty parking spaces with people hunting for a parking space on a regular basis.

I should have realized the potential for this ages ago – friends often ask to park on my driveway while they shop or visit the hospital or do other things around town – but like most blindlingly obvious things I missed this completely.

However, the penny finally dropped and I recently decided to let out a vacant parking space.

I found two services, one of which specializes in  UK parking spaces and the other which covers parking spaces worldwide.

Both allow you to put up an parking space advert free of charge. And both will charge the owner of the space am ongoing “finders fee” of 15%. A bit like property letting agents, except the fee is higher.

It’s easy to set up an advert with both companies.

The UK based company, Parklet, allows you to put an advert up for either a daily space or a longer term (monthly) rental. You can select from two different types of monthly rental – weekdays or whole months.

The advert is then sent off for approval and for Parklet to suggest a recommended rent. Until that happens, your advert doesn’t show up.

Parklet also act as middlemen – issuing a parking permit, checking that the car wanting to park is insured and handling payments.

If you’ve got a lot of parking spaces to look after , this service is well worth having as it takes care of most of the boring administration.

The other company, ParkAtMyHouse, is a lot less “control freak” in nature. You set your own price and the advert goes live immediately. There’s also much more flexibility on pricing – you can price your space by the hour, day, week, month, year or “event”.

This last option would be useful if your area fills up when special events happen. Maybe there’s a local exhibition centre, a golf tournament or (like my home town) horse racing.

Locally someone is renting out two spaces by the day on their drive if there’s a horse racing meeting on, someone else is renting out their drive by the hour when there’s a football match playing. This flexibility is excellent.

Of course, since you only pay if your available space is let, it’s worth registering with both sites and seeing who attracts the business for you.

If you’re searching for a parking space, I think you’ll prefer ParkAtMyHouse. You enter your location and the available spaces are clearly marked on a map, with a letter to easily identify each available space.

On both sites, it’s then a simple matter of tapping in your contact details and letting the site send them on to the parking space owner.

Renting out a spare parking space most likely won’t make your fortune but it will contribute to the cost of your motoring.

My preference as a user is definitely the ParkAtMyHouse site. It’s more flexible and the web site navigation is better.

In days gone by, your only choices for classified adverts would have been your local newspaper, a card in a newsagent’s window or maybe a poster on your window.

Nowadays, the internet has changed all that. It’s quicker – most classified adverts get approved instantly or – at worst – within an hour or so.

Craigslist dominates the classified ad scene in America, but in the UK they’re not so strong.

Before placing your next classified advert, take a look at our comparison chart:

	Craigslist	Gumtree	Vivastreet
Free ads
Advert duration	30 days	120 days	Unlimited renewals
Email anonymised
Approval time	Email confirmation sent	Email confirmation sent	Email confirmation sent for first advert, added to your account for subsequent ads
Pictures allowed		Up to 3 pictures	Up to 12 pictures
Add video
Easy to repost ad?	Advert runs for 30 days	Adverts need to be reposted	Email reminder for one-click reposting of advert
Range of locations	Very generalised locations	Major cities only	Location drill down to districts within towns
Featured listings offered		Extra cost	Extra cost
Advert alerts			Daily email alert of new adverts meeting your criteria
	Craigslist	Gumtree	Vivastreet

Verdict

In the UK, it’s a fairly close call between Gumtree and Vivastreet.

They each have their strengths and weaknesses. But since basic adverts are free, it’s worth placing your advert on both.

Adverts drop down the list on Gumtree, often quite fast, unless you pay extra for a premium listing.

Vivastreet‘s one click reposting makes it really easy to push your advert back up to the top of the list every few days. Whereas with Gumtree you have to place a new advert or pay for a featured listing. This means that whilst Gumtree may initially seem to have more listings, in some sections that may not be the case as people post new adverts to stay near the top.

Vivastreet also wins hands down for location selection. You should be able to easily set your town or location, rather than having to choose a city that’s close (or not so close) on the other two sites.

Sometimes it’s good to have a few uplifting moments, just to make the day go better and faster.

And one of the easiest ways to do this is to get sent an inspirational quote daily.

There are lots of different services out there that offer these:

You can even get these inspirational messages sent by SMS message direct to your phone, which if you’re often on the move is a great system. I’ve personally saved a number of these messages that resonated with me.

Quotes such as this one from Eleanor Roosevelt:  “You must do the thing that you think you cannot do”.

And maybe my all-time favourite from the science fiction author Arthur C. Clark: “The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.”

Getting inspirational quotes like these on a daily basis is a nice “drip feed” way of boosting yourself.

Not everyone wants to spend money to get quotes sent to their phone, so another option is to have them delivered direct to your email inbox.

Which is exactly what Daily Inspirational Quotes does.

In exchange for your email address, they promise to send you a fresh inspirational quote every day for as long as you like.

The service works well. It only takes a few seconds to sign up and that’s it. The only other thing you need to do is read them.

I found it best to store the quotes in a separate folder, so that I could refer to them whenever I need a boost.

You can sign up for these daily inspirational quotes here:

A friend of mine installed a Ferroli boiler at a property he owns.

The sales pitch was good: 5 year guarantee, good price, that kind of thing.

What was missed though was that the built-in time clock wasn’t mentioned in the manual. Or even as an afterthought leaflet with the boiler. No instructions, just guesswork…

No problem – a quick search on the internet was bound to turn something up we thought.

Hmmm, think again.

Just lots of people with the same problem.

So, after nearly 30 minutes on hold to Ferroli’s premium rate 0871 phone number (fortunately translated by SayNoTo0870 to 01283 714800) he finally got through to technical support.

“Can I download the instructions from your website?” my friend asked?

“No” came the reply.

“But we can email them to you”.

To save you from wasting half an hour of your life on hold, you can download the Ferroli Time Clock instructions from the link below:

Optimax HE Digital Timer instructions

P.S. If this has helped you, please leave a comment below.