ReadWriteEnterprise

One of the things that I'm often asked by developers at conferences is "how do I get coverage for my project?" I had that conversation with several people at Monktoberfest, and thought it might make for a good talk at Monki Gras.

Specifically, the talk was for individual developers, small groups working on open source projects or startups (to a point). It's not meant for people looking to grab press coverage for a business, but for developers largely interested in finding more users and developers for their project.

Ever wonder what other companies are choosing for hosting, Email, DNS, etc.? As it happens, there's an app for that (so to speak) and someone put the Y Combinator companies under the microscope. With 248 companies examined, you get some pretty interesting results. If Y Combinator companies are the future, Google is looking really good for email hosting, and Amazon is doing really well for Web Hosting.

The discussion is already nearly five years old, and yet the vacancy in the public conscience persists as if something big had collapsed just last week. Microsoft is no longer the dominating, polarizing force that it was in the previous decade. The mindset of the company that once preached to its employees, "Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat," has exited out the back door and sneaked past the gaze of European regulators.

And boy, do we ever miss it. From the moment Ycombinator co-founder Paul Graham famously proclaimed "Microsoft is Dead," our casting couches have been warmed by the seats of would-be substitutes. Like it or not, Microsoft fulfilled a latent psychological need in many folks' minds: the need for a strongly polarizing force that made it easier to decide what to like and what to hate.