Laid off in the recession and thinking of starting a business? Or just tired of working for someone else?

It’s hard to start a business alone. Aspiring entrepreneurs must tackle an onslaught of questions like what and where to sell, how to effectively market their product or service, how to structure their business — even whether going solo is the best option for them.

Andy Rash

There’s no shortage of advice and resources for fledgling entrepreneurs. In fact, the biggest problem is figuring out whom to trust and what resources will be most useful. That involves scouting out what’s available and judging what is worth pursuing. Yes, it’s time-consuming. But one good piece of advice or personal connection can make or break your chance at success.

Here’s a look at some possible places for new entrepreneurs to turn.

Planning a Start-Up? Help and Advise Abound – WSJ.com.

At the Robert L. Ford School in Lynn, middle schoolers wrote essays about what advice Rev. Martin Luther King would give President-elect Barack Obama. What follows are some thoughts from students about how they view the two African-American leaders, and their hopes for the new president.

King would advise Obama to strive for peace, pupils say – The Boston Globe.

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On Tuesday, all eyes and ears will be turned to the man whose oratorical skills have been compared to Abraham Lincoln’s, Franklin Roosevelt’s and John Kennedy’s. What does Barack Obama need to do in his inaugural address? We asked William Safire and other former presidential speechwriters for their ideas.

The Speech’: An Experts’ Guide – Room for Debate Blog – NYTimes.com.

Amsterdam has three main attractions: Rembrandt in the Rijksmuseum; hookers in windows; and Anne Frank in the attic. It’s a contradictory cultural compendium in a contradictory city. You walk past the office on the canal, above and behind which are the secret rooms the Frank family silently lived in for two years; beneath it is a long, silent line of American-Jewish students waiting to get in for half an hour’s empathy. And you know that somewhere down this street or the next one is the house of the person who betrayed the Franks. Unknown, unremarked, still secret, there is a room where someone sat and thought: “After lunch, I must pop down to the Gestapo and hand in that family in the attic.†The Dutch hid 30,000 Jews, most of whom survived the war, but handed over more than 100,000, most of whom didn’t.

The English translation of Anne Frank’s diary was published here in the 1950s. It made a modest impact and went out of print. It was in America and, oddly, Japan that it became iconic. In Germany, it was regularly accused of being a forgery; too well written for an adolescent, they said. Anne did rewrite it. She wanted to be a novelist, dreamt of it being published; after the war, her father censored it to take out the critical things she had said about her mother. After he died, they went back in.

The Diary of Anne Frank, Nicholas Crane’s Britannia, Antiques Roadshow, The Antiques Rogue Show – Times Online.