DEMO conference

Unless youre a regular reader of TechCrunch or Vallywag, you probably wouldnt recognize many—or any—of the DEMO conference attendees as celebrities. So we were all psyched to get some time with John Oates (who used to play with a guy named Daryl), telling the story of how he wrote the song Shes Gone.

Green Plug wants to rewire your gizmos and even your home, and ditch most of your wall wart chargers in the process. Instead of each gadget having its own charger built to deliver just the right amount of power, it would have a chip that tells a universal charger how much power it needs.

At the DEMO conference in Palm Desert, California yesterday, the audience of 500-some technology veterans watched in rapt fascination as a company called Livescribe introduced its brilliant invention: a pen.

Yes that is John Oates (of Hall and Oates fame) playing to a hall full of geeks, flacks and VCers. But he wasnt a random celebrity shill. He was actually doing something useful—showing the audience how to play his classic song Shes Gone, (see a video here) as he does on an instructional video download from tech startup iVideosongs. The Web service is one of 77 debut companies, each given six minutes onstage to explain their technology--and how theyll make money with it.