Below is the program guide that is being given out to attendees this morning at TechCrunch50. It includes the full schedule, along with all the panels and keynotes, as well as fuller descriptions of the companies presenting.

This week we’re going to see dozens of companies launch new products. Here are a few of the companies presenting this week at DEMO that are showing some strong potential:

In most cases, choice is a good thing. But when it comes to online video, the abundance of content available on the web can be overwhelming. ffwd (pronounced fast-foward) deals with this by picking your videos for you. The site uses video meta data as well as user behaviors to create virtual “channels” of video, which are essentially dynamically updated playlists.

Rudder shares a lot in common with Mint, a personal finance site that debuted last year at TechCrunch40 (and won the conference’s top prize). Both sites present financial data in attractive, intuitive graphs. But Rudder is taking a slightly different approach: while Mint analyzes your past spending habits to help you adjust in the future, Rudder is concerned with telling you how much you have available to spend on a given day.

Photrade

With image piracy rampant on the web these days, a number of startups have sprung up to help users easily obtain legal pictures. Photrade has a similar goal, but it also manages to help casual photographers make some cash in the process.

I know where I am going to be checking to see what people are saying about TechCrunch50 this week. The TechCrunch50 Aggregator. It is a site developed by Sean Percival to collect all the Twitters, FreindFeed comments, blog posts, news stories, photos, videos, Diggs,and Techmeme headlines that are tagged “techcrunch50″or “tc50.”

Even right now, in the middle of the night before the show starts, you can see a picture of the team still unloading boxes, read Robert Scoble lamenting via Twitter that nobody has yet leaked the list of TC50 finalists (ha!), and other various opinions.

As anyone with a lick of tech knowledge knows, ripping a DVD onto your hard drive is, well, frowned upon by the “Powers that be” in the motion picture industry. Realizing that, RealNetworks has launched a new solution called RealDVD, which lets users copy DVDs onto their hard drives without facing legal troubles. Even better, it only takes about 20 minutes to do so. Sounds great, right? There’s only one catch: it keeps the DRM.

After copying the DVD onto your hard drive, you can’t transfer the movie to a friend’s computer, so you’ll be stuck using your own. Much like iTunes, though, RealDVD lets you authorize five computers to play the movies on the hard drive.

Web applications require a lot of data storage. All the videos uploaded to YouTube, for example, are estimated to take up more than 500 terabytes of storage. Google’s servers overall process one petabyte of data every hour or so. Google had to create its own Web-scale file system to handle all the data that it processes and stores. As Web-scale computing and the needs of plain-old enterprise storage grow, many more companies are wishing they had a file system like Google’s.

Monday, a startup called ParaScale is launching a private beta of a commercial-grade storage software that uses a similar approach to Google’s own in-house system. (ParaScale nearly made it into TechCrunch50 this year, but was just shy of making the cut, largely because it was no longer in stealth mode). It offers a file system that can run on a cluster of any off-the-shelf Linux servers.

Companies can keep adding as many servers as they need, with each one acting as a redundant node. The software runs on the cluster as whole, treating it as one giant file system. This creates private cloud storage that companies can host themselves inside their own firewalls. ParaScale CEO Sajai Krishnan says customers can expect to pay about $1 per gigabyte, depending on their server costs.

CollectiveX, a bootstrapped startup located in Maryland, will roll out version 2 of it’s year old social network collaboration platform today. Full disclosure: the company is a TechCrunch50 Exhibitor (which is a sponsor).

In a nutshell, think of CollectiveX as a sort of LinkedIn-type professional social network, with collaboration tools for groups (companies, boards of directors, whatever). Calendaring, blogging, file sharing, photos, etc. Robert Scoble calls them “social websites.”

Groups create shared websites for members. In this new version pages are customizable and modularized (think Netvibes). users can also take any module on a page and embed it on a third party site, or pull any third party widgets or code into their CollectiveX site. There’s a free option for groups, or they can buy things like a more white label experience (see top image above), extra storage, etc. for a monthly fee.

Jessica Guynn has an excellent interview with Google’s Marissa Mayer today about Google’s first ten years (today is arguably Google’s tenth birthday). Good stuff in there - Marissa talks about Google’s accomplishments in search and advertising, and looks forward to a future where cloud computing becomes pervasive. Marissa also says she hopes to still be at the company in another ten years.

But one thing caught my eye. Marissa says search is “90 to 95%” solved:

Search is an unsolved problem. We have a good 90 to 95% of the solution, but there is a lot to go in the remaining 10%. How do we monetize new forms of content as they come online such as video, maps and books. How do we help content providers transition their businesses online and build healthy businesses.

Here’s the thing. I don’t think search is even close to being solved yet. In a May 25 post I talked about how early I think we are in search, and why a competitive search market is so important to make sure innovation keeps happening:

ChaCha used to be a ridiculous human powered web based search engine that’s best use appeared to be for killing time when bored.

They raised a boatload of money from Jeff Bezos and others and eventually switched to an all-mobile interface. They also began offering their platform to third party marketers.

But now there are indications that the company is having cash flow issues, even after a recent pay cut to guides. As before, the information is coming from their poorly-paid and poorly-treated human guides.

I haven’t had a lot of time to jump into the fracas this weekend emerging about TechCrunch50 because the team has been busy organizing the conference, working with the Expert Panelists on scheduling issues and spending hours and hours working with the 52 startups that will be launching at the event to make sure their demos properly reflect what they’ve worked so hard to create.

But I do have a few things to say.

First, thanks to Chris O’Brien at the San Jose Mercury News who wrote such a great article on TechCrunch and the conference. What a wonderful, positive way to kick things off as we go into the craziness on Monday. He really gets what we’re trying to accomplish and how honored we are that these startups have chosen to launch at our event.

It’s been just a few days after our post on Geni’s big growth numbers - and now big news from Israeli competitor MyHeritage.

The site has grown from 180 million profiles a year ago to 260 million today, they say. Registered users have also grown, from 17 million to 25 million. Compare that to almost 2 million users for Geni. 230 million photos have been uploaded to the site, which is available in 25 languages and has 5 million monthly unique visitors. Support for ten more language will be released this month.

Investors have certainly noticed MyHeritage’s stellar growth. The company has raised a new round of funding - $15 million in a Series D round led by Index Ventures and joined by current investor Accel Partners. That brings their total capital raised to $24 million.

Giving away products can be a logistical pain. For instance, when we give away a T-shirt or laptop, we have to go through hundreds of comments, contact the person, and do a lot of manual processing. A new Y Combinator startup called ContestMachine that just launched makes giving stuff away as easy as putting a widget on your blog.

You create a contest widget by entering all the details of the giveaway: prizes, deadlines, rules. Winners can be randomly chosen by ContestMachine or judged by the blogger. It automates the process of creating giveaways, and opens up contests to any blogger or small business who has a Website. The service is free to try out for up to two contests a month, and then charges $9 a month or $90 a year for more contests.

Editor’s Note: This post represents the professional advice of Brian Solis who is not formally affiliated with TechCrunch50. If you are a participating TC50 company, resident TechCrunch PR expert Sarah Ross is available to share and review the public relations guidelines with you. It is important to work directly with Sarah to ensure you are in compliance with these guidelines to maximize your PR opportunity while also avoiding disqualification.

How do you launch a startup at a big tech conference without getting lost in the crowd? With TechCrunch50, Demo and several other major tech conferences around the corner, this question is on the minds of more than one entrepreneur. How do you create visibility for your startup, and do you need PR to do it, or just a great demo?

The coming days and weeks will be filled by some of the industry’s most anticipated, attended and watched conferences. They’re all competing for mind share and they are attracting influential attendees and spectators who will report their experiences and observations far and wide. In the next two to three weeks, over 150-200 companies will vie for attention and precious blog and media real estate.

Your story, as wonderful as it is, will need help rising above the flurry of news that will jockey to reach the ears and eyes of bloggers, press, customers, investors, and partners.

Gwendolyn DeBard Strong was born on October 4, 2007 and was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 1 (SMA1) in April 2008. SMA1 is a terminal genetic disease that results in loss of nerves in the spinal cord and weakness of the muscles connected with those nerves.

Her parents are asking that you consider signing a petition asking Congress to fund research into a cure for the disease. The NIH has said that a cure is possibly only a few years away.

The petition is here. Please read and sign it, and pass this on to others. The goal is 50,000 signatures. If each of you reading this sign now, we’ll get to that number in just a few hours. And if you watch the video, you’ll sign.

Maybe it’s just because I’m a Dad who refuses to get a minivan, but I seriously want Volkswagon to bring back the Microbus. (Or maybe BMW’s Mini should make one and call it the Minibus). VW showed off an updated Microbus concept vehicle a few years back, but now there is serious talk that VW is thinking about actually producing it in North America. I hope they do. It looks like a fun ride and, unlike the Mini, has enough room for two kids and luggage.

We’re getting reports that Peerflix, the tumultuous company that switched from acting as a DVD-swapping service to an ad network, has been acquired by Brad Greenspan’s LiveUniverse for an undisclosed amount (though we’re guessing it’s pretty low). We’ve asked LiveUniverse to comment.

Peerflix was founded in 2004 as a “peer-to-peer Netflix”, helping users to swap DVDs they owned for a dollar. The site abandoned the flat fixed pricing scheme for a demand-based model in 2006, but that didn’t work well either: in November 2007 it decided to launch a media network that had nothing to do with its original DVD swapping service. Peerflix finally canned the DVD trading business earlier this year, so Live Universe is acquiring it solely for its ad network.

Shasta Ventures, a venture fund managing $460 million and investments in startups like Mint, Flock and Turn, has promoted Jason Pressman to Managing Director and added a new associate, Evan Liang, to the team.

Every couple has its ups and downs, but most people try to keep their dirty laundry to themselves. But what about those times when you just can’t come to an agreement with your significant other?

Today sees the launch of SideTaker a site that asks couples to upload both sides of their arguments and let the crowd settle their debates. SideTaker members can vote on which side they agree with, or leave comments to ask for further details or voice their opinions. The site is hilarious. Disputes range from cheating spouses to toilet flushing, oftentimes filled with more detail than anyone would want to know.

Last July I wrote about MyAWOL, a web-centric music label looking to compete with traditional labels, which are becoming increasingly less relevant as artists turn to digital distribution methods to gain exposure. While the site has the potential to break some new ground in the online music world, it has run into a major snag during its buildup to launch: its name sounds almost exactly like My.AOL when spoken aloud.

In light of this, the company has decided to rename the site to LP33.TV, which should hopefully be less confusing. LP33 is more memorable, but I think the company should consider dropping the .TV extension entirely since they already own the .com.

Along with the name change, LP33.TV is also launching its database for music industry professionals, TheMIDB, which hopes to fulfill the same role as the movie and television industry’s popular IMDB. The derivative name will probably confuse just about everyone, but at least it makes the site’s purpose clear.

Tatango, the ad-supported group SMS service previously known as networkText, spent the last few months in a private beta following a functional and visual overhaul and a round of funding by Bellingham Angel Organization. Now everyone is free to get in on the group texting good times; they’ve opened the doors to the public.

The service is dead simple to use, as it should be. I made the jump from accountless bum to en masse messaging mogul in all of about 2 minutes.