Over the next two days at the DEMO conference in Palm Springs, California, more than 50 companies will take the stage and introduce their product in six minutes flat. It's a format that has become an industry standard, with conferences like TechCrunch 50, TechCrunch Disrupt and LAUNCH following in its footsteps.

A continual criticism of DEMO over the years, however, has been that the price of entry is simply too high. At nearly $20,000, the cost of getting on stage at one of the world's pre-eminent tech conferences can be prohibitive to say the least, so we decided to take a look at how funding broke down for the $1,000,000 in presentations we're seeing over the 48-hours.

52% of companies that disclosed funding disclosed $1m in funding or less.  85% less than $5 million.  32% disclosed between $1m and $5m, the most popular category.  10% disclosed $10m in funding or more.  The most funded of the group is content security firm WebSense, which reported more than $50m in funding.

How does this compare to the Launch conference last week, which argued DEMO was too pricey for bootstrapped startups to launch at? Though the data is incomplete (we could only find funding data for 7 of 37 companies at Launch), it's worth at least a passing mention that the Launch companies that disclosed any funding on Crunchbase have raised an average of $2m each.  That's roughly in the same sweet spot as DEMO.

The Demos Slam preseason starts today and will run for the next few weeks. Viewers will be able to vote for a weekly winner from the featured demos and as the competition continues, these winners will then go head-to-head until the overall champion is crowned. A group of Googlers will choose the videos for each week's competition based on "creativity and entertainment value."

There doesn't seem to be any direct benefit of this for Google, though given that most tech demos tend to be rather boring, this could turn out to be a boon for the tech community as a whole.

ReadWriteWeb readers can receive a discount rate of $2,395 ($600 off the standard rate of $2,995 and $400 lower than the July early bird rate of $2795) by clicking here for registration.

While there are more than 40 different partners here today - from Myspace to IMDB - the number two search engine showed off an IE9 integration that included features like background video and on-screen transitions that you just have to see.

Unfortunately, the full demo is not currently available, as someone tweeted out the URL of the demo during the keynote speech and more than 5 million people hit the server all at once, Henshaw told us. Some features that were not included - which are some of our favorites - included drastically improved image browsing, but we still can't stop looking at the improved interface, tabbed browsing and general navigation.

"Time spent is the most important indicator of web 2.0," writes Nicolas. "It replaces page views, which became meaningless when pages are refreshed piece by piece (Ajax)." But time spent can be hard to measure. It is difficult to measure what a person is looking at, or interacting with on a page.

Nicolas' demo uses Google Web Toolkit to divide time spent between individual sections of a page. It tracks exactly what on a page a person is looking at and for how long by measuring the time each piece of a page is visible on the user's screen. This results in very detailed and useful data.

For example, using this method, marketers could see exactly how long a person looked at a specific product on a page, or how long banners were viewed -- imagine selling banner spots based not on how many ads are shown, but how long each ad is viewed by the average visitor. When combined with clickstream data, you can begin to imagine how useful the data could be for marketers.

Nicolas has banner exposure demo as well, demonstrating how his technology could be used to track the time banner ads are being seen by users.

This type of innovative audience measurement technology will become more useful as web publishers continue to embrace technologies like AJAX that make page loads irrelevant. Optimizing ad placement may be less about putting banners in the most visible spot, but rather putting banners in a post that will be viewed for the longest time (this type of audience measurement tool has similar implications for design and page layout optimization).

PressBooks has spent six months working with authors and publishers to refine and test the tool. Big-time publishers like O'Reilly Media give rave reviews. This team is "dreaming up what 'book production' should mean (or, some of it anyway) in 2012 and beyond."

This is the dream. It turns out quality e-books in all the important formats, as well as a Web-based version. To see it in action, check out part 1 of Book: a Futurist's Manifesto online. It's not the first e-book self-publishing tool, but it looks ready for the future, serving big and small publishers alike.

And get this: authors and very small publishers can use PressBooks for up to three books for free. PressBooks asks bigger publishers to contact them for pricing. Learn more at PressBooks.com.

"Ask five different technologists to define the next phase of the Web and you will get five different answers. As we move beyond the community-driven focus of Web 2.0, the theories of what lies ahead are rampant and disparate. Will the next Internet revolution lie in semantic technologies or data portability? Search engines or user-generated content? Where does the enterprise fit? And how will big media adapt?"

So a couple of great sessions focused on the future of technology, which of course is right up our street.

ReadWriteWeb readers can receive a discount rate of $2,395 ($600 off the standard rate of $2,995 and $400 lower than the July early bird rate of $2795) by clicking here for registration.

This is Version 0.6 of Magneto and so it's an early beta release. As such, the company doesn't recommend it for use in production environments. Magento does however come with professional and community support. Along with the usual e-commerce features (product input, shopping cart, single-page checkout, etc), some other features of note are integration with 3rd party apps and product tagging.

Magento Admin interface

Frontend Demo store

Add to cart function

ReadWriteWeb readers can receive a discount rate of $2,395 ($600 off the standard rate of $2,995 and $400 lower than the July early bird rate of $2795) by clicking here for registration.

Here is the entire agenda.

In addition, Mapstraction "fills some holes each provider's current offerings" - meaning if a certain mapping provider doesn't offer a particular feature that another one does, Mapstraction turns to open source solutions (for the most part) to provide the feature needed.

Those are the technical details, but what's really impressive about Mapstraction are the demos. Take, for example, this demo, a single page showing several maps. As you move around in one map, the other three also move simultaneously to reflect the changes that take place in the map you're using. This is a great way to view comparisons of the different mapping systems side-by-side.

Another feature of Mapstraction allows for tile layer support. This feature lets you toggle different overlays on top of a mapping provider's map, like this one. Clicking the links below this map let you toggle different overlays on top of the Google Map to see maps from 1950, 1912, and 1877.

This demo takes you to a full screen map where you can switch from mapping provider to mapping provider by selecting the name in the box displayed in the bottom-left corner. (Note: to exit the demo, you'll need to know your browser's keyboard shortcut to go "back").

Mapstraction isn't exactly new, having debuted back in 2006. It's currently in use in places like the UK's Nestoria, Mapufacture, Reuters Labs, and even powers a WordPress and MT plugin called GeoPress, which adds geo-tagging to your posts and pages.  However, we would like to see some more Mapstraction mashups - so if you've built one, let us know in the comments.

ReadWriteWeb readers can receive a discount rate of $2,395 ($600 off the standard rate of $2,995 and $400 lower than the July early bird rate of $2795) by clicking here for registration.

Here is the entire agenda.

The focus: over 50% is broadly in the Business category. Without looking at past Demo years, that looks like a shift: less Valley, more Biz.

Silicon Valley 20 (28%)
East Coast US 18 (25%)
West Coast US 10 (14%)
Central US 9 (13%)
Europe 7 (10%)
Asia 6 (8%)
Other 2 (3%)
Total: 72

The US focus (79%) is clearly self-selecting. A conference in London or Shanghai would look different. To have nearly the same number from East Coast than from the Valley looks like a shift. The Other West Coast (e.g. Southern California, Seattle) is not surprising as Demo is in San Diego.

The focus categorization was a bit more open to question. This was based on a quick look at the site's front page. Initially we were looking at two categories only - Consumer or Business. Within Business we then saw two interesting sub-categories - Infrastructure (a product that becomes part of another product) and Professional (selling to individuals or very small businesses but with a primary purpose of making money). Lumping both Infrastructure and Professional into Business gives us 54% for Business:

Consumer 32 (44%)
Business 25 (35%)
Professional 7 (10%)
Infrastructure 7 (10%)

As Consumer services are mostly ad funded and advertising gets cut in a recession (and we clearly have a consumer recession in the US) this shift makes sense.

Doing this 30 seconds per site look at 72 brave new start-ups is totally unfair. They each deserve a rigorous analysis. However 30 seconds is often what you get to make an impression. Most sites failed that test. Many had me totally puzzled figuring out what they were offering.

The following got marked as "take another look". This is purely a quirky look based on personal interests:

• Usable - really, security that is user friendly? Sounds impossible, but worth a look. Great URL
• ffwd. Great URL for video site. But yet another video service?
• BeeTV. The only service I have actually used. (I thought Demo was launch only i.e. no existing services?)
• BestBuy - what are they doing that hits the innovation radar?
• Rudder - personal finance space is ripe for innovation.

What do you think? Is the nexus of innovation shifting from the Valley and from Consumer to Business? And if anyone has done a similar analysis for TC50, please share in the comments.

If you're not familiar with DEMO, it's a very slick conference where startup companies are selected to present to an audience of potential investors, reporters and others. It's been around for decades and has roots in the mobile world. All the major tech blogs now race to cover the scads of companies that launch there each year. It's also become very controversial as the media and tech landscapes have changed.

I like DEMO, though my wife reminds me that every one of the 3 times I've been there as a reporter and once with a presenting company, I've called home and said "why do I come here, I don't want to ever come to this again." It's too Silicon Valley for me, though I do love getting to see and meet many of the people I always do at DEMO. I feel similarly about reporting on this story. I just want to see what Kara Swisher has to say about it, because I'm guessing that she's going to explode with snark.

More details on this in a few minutes as I fill in my thoughts on the topic. I just wanted to post first on it because the behind the scenes wrestling match over embargoes, etc. is absurd. It's actually pretty funny that you read about this here first.

I hate the fact that most of this story is not about Chris Shipley, who has done a great job for 13 years running DEMO, even dancing on stage while she does it! Unfortunately, some big personalities have overshadowed Shipley's hard work at least in these parts and in recent times.

Photo of Chris Shipley CC by Robert Scoble

Michael Arrington's contention is that DEMO is a "pay for play" event that excludes some of the most important innovators by way of its nearly $20k price of participation. Arrington, who incidentally is a former employer of mine and whom I owe a lot of gratitude for help with my career's advancement, believes that his competing conferences (the TechCrunch 50 etc.) are superior because they are free for startups to present at. That's a debate that has raged back and forth but my personal opinion is that many startups have for decades been able to drop that $20k without too much hesitation. Those who can't can debut at different events, or on blogs. Scheduling the TechCrunch events at the same time as DEMO seemed an overly competitive move to me, but Arrington doesn't often put the words "overly" and "competitive" in the same sentence. He is winning, too, so that's hard to argue with.

Now DEMO will be taken over by Matt Marshall, who is ostensibly a blogger and seems like a nice enough man. He's also been a partner in Arrington's other major conference The Crunchies for the past two years. We at ReadWriteWeb were as well for the first year, but we declined to participate this year.

Michael Arrington is a very competitive man whom many people either love, hate or have both feelings towards. Many people live in fear of falling out of his good graces, but now someone very much within his good graces (Matt Marshall) will be taking over the conference that Arrington seemed intent on killing. Meanwhile, Arrington himself is out of the country in an undisclosed tropical location taking a much needed break from a lot of hard work and some really inappropriate backlash from psychotic people targeting him for his accumulation and perhaps use of power in the tech industry.

It's all a big nasty Silicon Valley mess, and Silicon Valley is always fairly big and nasty. We'd like to see a bunch of successful conferences thrive and bring great technology into the public eye. We'd also like to congratulate Chris Shipley on her great work over the last 13 years and wish her the best in the consulting she'll continue to do.

Disclosure: DEMO is a current RWW sponsor.

You learned long ago not to leave your computer unprotected against the elements of the Internet. You would never think of accessing the Internet without anti-virus software (hush, you Mac folks), so why would you leave one of your most important online presences - your Facebook Page - unprotected?

Today at DEMO, WebSense launched Defensio 2.0 for Facebook, a Facebook app that can help keep your company's Facebook Page safe and clear from malicious links, spam and profanity.

Beyond these three basic categories and settings, the app also allows you to select a number of different website types to block from being posted on your page.

Defensio isn't the first of its kind, however. Last October, we wrote about a similar app by BitDefender, which performed a similar task. BitDefender's app, however, was directed more at the average user, helping to prevent oversharing and privacy infringing activities, in addition to malicious links. Defensio also has a full moderation panel that allows the Facebook Page's owner to look through quarantined items and decide to either allow or disallow them.

Defensio looks to be more directed at small businesses and those of you with a brand Facebook Page. Would you want to stop your friends from swearing on your personal Facebook page? Maybe not. Your brand's Facebook Page, however, is a different thing all together.