Gretel – Page 2 – The Starter Kit

Google’s advanced search operators

Google Search

A few days ago, whilst delivering one of our Start-up Essentials sessions on doing market research, I briefly mention that Google is your best friend for doing research, specially if you familiarise yourself with its advanced search operators.

Google itself has a great little basic guide on how to use them here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

Though my absolute favourite is this one by the Australian SEO company Supple, because is more of a quick, simple, visual reference library: https://supple.com.au/tools/google-advanced-search-operators/

Regardless of which one you use, Google search operators are incredibly useful when searching for very specific information or documents in a certain format that normal general searches would otherwise not rank as relevant enough to show up in search results.

Don’t be scare to give them a try, you never know what hidden information gem you might find!

Just like being in the coffee shop

Coffitivity is a very unique website that I found looking for tools to help me boost my productivity, mostly because my brain is very active at night but I find it hard to focus during the first couple of hours of the morning.

It is a website with a playlist of various seemingly never-ending coffee shop background noises. It’s supposed to help you concentrate better and hence, give your productivity a boost. They have 3 free clips that are pretty standard and quite similar from each other, but they also have a couple of premium offers if you fancy mind-transporting yourself all the way to Brazil, Paris or Texas.

I am actually trying it as I write this little review and although I find the premise a bit odd, I think it’s safe to say it’s actually helping! No more getting distracted by people passing by or overhearing random words from someone else’s conversations. It feels almost a bit magical… even if I still find it quite weird.

Anyway, I thought I would share ’cause some of you might be into that! (I certainly know that Steve Bowden, our Rise Up Business Adviser will love this, as he ~~craves~~ likes working from coffee shops in town from time to time)

If you want to feel as if you were in a coffee shop, make yourself a cuppa of your best instant coffee, put on your headphones and head here: https://coffitivity.com/

(Alternatively, you could also just go to an actual coffee shop. Whatever works better for you.)

Cheers!

Free IP protection course from IPO

If you’re confused about Intellectual Property (IP), don’t know how to protect your business idea or don’t even know if you can protect anything, the Intellectual Property Office (best known as IPO) has launched “IP Equip”, a free online course to teach you all about it!

From patents to copyright and everything in between, the interactive IP Equip course will teach you all you need to know in just over an hour. Plus is CPD accredited and you get an IPO certificate on completion.

Head here to start learning: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/blogs/equip/

Steve Blank’s Tools for Entrepreneurs

You might know Steve Blank as the author of “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” and “The Startup Owners’ Manual”, both recommended reading for anyone thinking about starting their own business. But few of you might know that he is actually less into making tons of money out of his every thought and very much into sharing all kinds of info.

He has, therefore, put together a dedicated part of his website precisely for that purpose. It is basically a repository of links to absolutely everything related to things that entrepreneurs might need along their journey that quite frankly makes me wonder 2 things:

1. Is he trying to compete with Google as a search engine for entrepreneurs? and

2. Why do I even bother trying to create my own repo?

Anyway, visit him here: https://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/ but come back for more great other obscure resources that he hasn’t found out about (yet!)

Cheers!

Storytelling and UX prototyping resource by SAP

SAP has released an incredibly useful little tool to quickly create user experience prototypes, storyboards, pitching structures and pretty much anything else you can imagine that requires a bit of storytelling.

It is a kit that you can download for free and print yourself. It comes “pre-loaded” with different characters, objects and scenarios that you can mix and match to create your own story fast and collaboratively.

But don’t just believe me, see it in action for yourselves!

You can read more about it and download it for free here: https://experience.sap.com/designservices/approach/scenes