Are all anon coins dead with Monero now? Bytecoin being a scam even if the tech is good, Zerocoin being a joke by having to trust a 3rd party to destroy the key which would lead to infinite spending without anyone ever knowing, or Darkcoin with the false promises of ring signatures (When this already works with Monero) + instamine.
CryptoNote technology (including BitMonero, BCN, etc.) is an interesting approach for increasing privacy, but Zerocoin provides better (i.e., proven to be perfect) anonymity.
In CryptoNote, the user decides how many people will participate in the ring signature: the more that are used, the more difficult it is to track transaction histories in the blockchain. However, even if this form of anonymity is good enough for most people today, blockchain analysis techniques are likely to become very sophisticated in the coming years. If you value your privacy, or if you have something to hide, the only truly anonymous solutions at this point are Zerocoin and Zerocash.
Ring signatures, CoinJoin ("darksend"), and stealth addresses are not perfect. If you use them, you do so at your own risk. I admit that these are the best solutions that are implemented in code today, but the anonymous altcoin scene will change dramatically before the year is over.
Also, Zerocoin (the original paper) does not need to trust a third party: As Gnosis has described elsewhere, this can be accomplished using RSA-UFOs. It is not clear to me if the same thing applies to Zerocash: Gnosis says no, but I would like to hear his opinion now that the paper is published.