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I have never been more grateful to Jason Calacanis. The prickly Internet entrepreneur disinvited me, you see, from TechCrunch40, the conference opening today in San Francisco that he organized with TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington. And thereby saved me from a long nap at the Sheraton Palace. The conference was originally supposed to highlight 20 companies, but Arrington and Calacanis couldn't decide on just 20, so they "doubled down" and expanded the list to 40, ostensibly because all the companies were so great. But then we all saw the list last night. I'd considered jumping off my red-eye flight and heading to the Sheraton Palace — indeed, friends begged me to just show up and see what happened. But going by the list of startups presenting there — Zivity? Orgoo? — I'm just as content to get your reports and post the best of them.