So who's at DEMO this year?

The "class of '09" at DEMO, underway today in Palm Desert, numbers just 39 -- down from 70 last year. But it's an exciting group, with some familiar names debuting new ideas and some fresh names very much hoping to make an impression.

Hey, it's... You know Citrix, Qualcomm, and Symantec well, and you met Evri right here at Betanews. Citrix is debuting GoView, which the company describes as a simple way to create and distribute screencasts for training, presentations and the like. Qualcomm's MEMS subsidiary is demonstrating their ultra-low-power mirasol display tech, glimpsed in the form of G-CORE at CES in January.

Symantec has Project Guru, which they're aiming at techish folk who occasionally have to troubleshoot Mom's computer remotely. (As Symantec's Brian Hernacki dryly puts it, "These are not the most enjoyable conversations and they do nothing to improve parent-child relationships.") Project Guru makes it possible to do so without a phone call or in-home visit with the inevitable drama and/or time sinkage. And Evri made the trip from sunny Seattle to show off evri.com.

And you are...? Many more names at DMEO are known mainly to family and friends of those involved. Cc:Betty, currently in the seed-funding stage, automagically sifts your email and turns certain kinds of long and winding e-mail threads (e.g., threads relating to work projects) into nicely organized collaborative Web pages. Along the same simplify-your-life lines, HowSimple, at the angel stage, is presenting a desktop app that manages and shares content and media in a panel-based viewing model.

Zipadi -- which can fight cc:Betty for the Most Amusing Name award I'll be giving as soon as I'm running DEMO -- aims to be the first do-it-yourself Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, geared toward the small-and-medium business (SMB) crowd, though DEMO organizers comment that the magazine world could also click with this model. Zipadi is currently at the seed stage. Always Innovating's Touch Book doesn't care if you call it a netbook or a touchscreen tablet, as the device, based on Linux and open-source hardware design, does both. Always Innovating is self-funded.

Oh, it's like... As usual, there's a presenter or two that gives one the "okay, I get it" feeling at first sight. Purewire Trust has a plan for dynamically establishing trust and safety online; they're hardly the first crew to notice a need, but success could remarkably improve Net users' ability to establish confidence in online interactions. The company's in its angel funding round.

SmartyCard, privately held and not actively seeking funding, has a kids' learn-stuff-earn-stuff model that'll be instantly understandable to any parent with children on a point-chart system. And Silverstone Solutions, currently at the seed stage, has an system that you wish were widely available already: The company's Matchmaker software uses complex algorithms to match potential kidney donors and recipients, finding optimal matches.