AWS Start-Up Challenge 2010

Everyone can get a free $25 in AWS credit for entering (eligible countries at http://aws.amazon.com/startupchallenge/countries/).

That seems like a good reason to enter (we'll have to see what the criteria are for entering once the contest actually goes live).

Would be great if Amazon considered more 3rd world countries as those countries don't have or barely have any kind of startup support/ecosystem. It gives the few individuals doing the startup thing at least some chance at scoring some "funding."

"Eligible countries"? Please. This coming from a cloud computing global economy no-borders company?

What kind of a challenge is that? We are a startup based in Poland — neighboring EU countries can participate, and we can't, even though it is the same European Union.

I find it sad that companies so often arbitrarily exclude the majority of the world and everyone just accepts it, rationalizing all the time. I believe that every time such exclusions are made we should stand up for whomever is excluded and shout. We are past the days of national borders as far as Internet goes.

I wonder if they count companies using Heroku as "implementation and integration of Amazon Web Services"

It is a shame that Norway isn't an eligible country. Why?