StartupCafe

Changing to Thursday due to another meeting coming up on Wednesday. Apologies for the switcheroo!

I am a market research jackpot. I will speak with you about your needs. 1 in 6 of my users are startups… What am I?

I am SCOTBIS, the Scottish Business Information Service at the National Library of Scotland (George IV bridge across from the central library).

If you’re already signed up and have made use of the resources, then pat yourself on the back and let us know what you thought. If you’re in the dark, here are 10 reasons to check it out:

1.  No more swearing when you find the perfect report online that wants to charge you £3000 to read it – you just might find it free!

2.  ‘This is the motherload. Everything is in here’ – anonymous SCOTBIS enthusiast, a real person who has used it for his MBA dissertation (more…)

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The topic of citizen journalism, old/new media has been a  favourite topic of mine this past week after Jeff Ullman mentioned the “death of newspapers” in his talk. To my surprise, the Guardian announced that they are building a blog focused on local media, and for some unknown reason, has chosen Leeds, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Plus, they are advertising for a position of a local blogger! And we’re not just talking about “pay per blog” type of job – but a real job. With money attached. In fact, it’s marked as a 12 month freelance post. I’ve copied the job description verbatim below.

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Last week, Jeff Ullman from Stanford University gave a talk to the Informatics Entrepreneurship class which was opened up to the wider world. The core of it was the ideas that made Google really what it is – PageRank and TrustRank – and the technical concepts behind it. Here are my notes from the talk just in case you missed it and wanted to know what it was about …

The early search engines crawled the web (following the links from page to page, finidng and copying as many pages as you could). Index the pages by the words they contained. And then when you’re given a search query, you find the pages that contains those words. (more…)

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Apart from free food, free beer, and free speech, the next best thing is software that you don’t have to pay for. Microsoft Bizspark program is for software startups where you can get Microsoft software for free, as well as some technical support for free too. According to the entrepreneur’s handbook, the support you get is:

Get Support: Get professional support from Microsoft and get connected to BizSpark Network Partners around the world who provide a wide range of support resources for software startups. Network Partners (more…)

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Georgina Hamshaw from Edinburgh Research and Innovation is running a lunchtime seminar next Wed (14th Oct 2009) on Scotbis. According to the Scotbis website, they are:

SCOTBIS (Scottish Business Information Service) provides a research service for businesses across Scotland.

SCOTBIS is based on the vast resources of the National Library of Scotland. At NLS you can access market research reports, business databases, international directories, and business and trade journals.

Sounds like anyone doing opportunity/market assessment might be interested! I’ve never heard of them before, so if anyone does go and want to volunteer a roundup post, then please let me know. More details below.

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You know what they say about 6 degrees of separation? Well, on Friday morning, Google Wave came up during one of our research meetings. Stuart Anderson then mentioned how he recognised Lars Rasmussen – one of the Rasmussen brothers who developed both Google maps and Google Wave – and thought he might have worked in LFCS at the School of Informatics (or the Department of Computer Science, back in those days).

Well, after a bit of Googling, it turns out he was right. Lars Rasmussen was in LFCS (see his report here and article here) back in the early 1990s along with Mark Jerrum (now at Queen Mary).

It’s a funny old world.

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Daydreaming about starting a new StartupCafe feature? Bursting for an outlet to share your views on technology and entrepreneurship? Or curious to cover local startups and events while interviewing influential people in the tech/startup scene? We’ve got our hands full here at StartupCafe as things are taking off, but there is much more we’d love to tackle!

Meeting: TOMORROW Friday, 2nd October at 1pm – in Management School lobby (look for us on the couches). That’s the big white building next to Potterrow in Bristo Square, above the Health Centre. Might hop to a real cafe, so call/text 07746 446 346 if you’re running late and we’ll let you know where we’ve wound up.

Whether you’ve always dreamed of reviewing the latest gadgets or you get a high from spurring heated debates, we’d be delighted to chat with you. We are looking for guest bloggers to contribute on a regular basis for approx 2-4 months, and we are open to discussing what excites you.

Some features that are sitting on the back burner: (more…)

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