
Xobni Corporation Selected to Join Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program - drm237
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-22-2008/0004740748&EDATE=
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watmough
In other news, King Herod announces free daycare for all infants under 1 year
old.

In response to the question below, I really couldn't see Microsoft being able
to stomach a rails application. They really are all about the 'ecosystem' of
Windows.

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gscott
Xobni's competition is Microsoft. The only good thing I imagine that could
come from this is getting ahold of the next Outlook to see how many features
MS adopted and figure out how Xobni can adapt.

~~~
plusbryan
Hardly. We're making Outlook "cool again" and they're helping us do our jobs
by giving us the support and software we need to do so. It's a complete win-
win.

~~~
gscott
Microsoft will do what is best for Microsoft. They always have done what is
best for them and they continue to do so. Microsoft takes the best add-ons and
features from competitors and adds them to there own software. That is not a
bad thing, Apple does it too. It just means that as they do, you have to
figure a way to improve upon there new offering.

~~~
wumi
"Microsoft will do what is best for Microsoft"

and how is that any different than 90% of other companies?

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gscott
Microsoft is different because they play both sides. Just as long as no one is
lulled into a false sense of security, that was the meaning of my post.

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drm237
Once I saw this, I looked on the Xobni blog to see if they had a better story
but there wasn't anything. If you have a better link, post it as a comment.

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drm237
[http://www.xobni.com/blog/2008/01/22/microsoft-startup-
accel...](http://www.xobni.com/blog/2008/01/22/microsoft-startup-accelerator-
program/)

~~~
daniel-cussen
This is blog post is the first time a YCer posts something that sounds like a
press release. I guess that's cuz it was a summary, but it still weirds me
out.

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joeguilmette
?

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bfioca
Interesting. This gives me the heebs a bit... I wonder how valuable it is, in
the end. I suppose it's a good set-up for potential acquisition, but I wonder
how much they tie you to their platform. Could a site that uses rails get in
if they had a .Net client app, for example?

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sspencer
Wonder what the fine print of THAT agreement is like...

I can't help but think they may have accidentally sold their souls for free
copies of Visual Studio.

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joeguilmette
Congratulations!

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daniel-cussen
Of all the posts I've read YCers make, this is the one that most looks like a
press release.

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gaborcselle
That's because it is. Look on the Xobni blog for a post that shows a little
more love :-)

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daniel-cussen
Sorry, I was actually talking about that very blog post. I should have pointed
that out.

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brezina
yeah, i kinda felt corporate writing it. Sorry. I wasn't very inspired by the
announcement of the MSFT accelerator press release. The press release was
pretty much all boiler plate and had to be approved by MSFT.

You should check out the post I wrote right before the accelerator post. It is
much more my style. [http://www.xobni.com/blog/2008/01/21/celebrating-user-
happin...](http://www.xobni.com/blog/2008/01/21/celebrating-user-happiness/)

~~~
brezina
I should add...

Our involvement in this program is about more than free copies of Visual
Studio. MSFT is helping the participating companies develop credibility with
large MSFT software consumers. This is particularly valuable outside of
Silicon Valley.

I think Loopt is the only other YC-funded company participating in the
program.

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joshwa
What does this mean for future web-based (e.g. gmail) versions of Xobni?

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ardit33
ummm.... congratulations?

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rms
Wow, free visual studio... doesn't anyone hack .net in vim?

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gduffy
Though I do use VS a lot, I actually do use vim -- and awk, grep, sed, etc --
when VS/Resharper can't do the tricks I want.

PuttyCyg/Cygwin provides a nice shell + unix tools on Windows.

