Jason Calacanis has teamed up with Michael Arrington to launch a new showcase event for startups, the Techcrunch 20. And, in the brash entrepreneur's typical style, he's slammed competing pitch events, such as Demo. So it's amusing to discover that Calacanis' new venture, a search engine with editorialized results for popular topics such as TV shows and tech products, will be unveiled, not at Techcrunch 20, but at one of the conferences it is trying to displace. Mahalo, we're hearing, will be demoed later this month at All Things Digital, the prestigious conference organized by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal. Now there's an uncontroversial reason for the choice: Sequoia-backed Mahalo was supposed to launch weeks ago, and the Techcrunch event won't take place till September. But there's a more cynical take: Calacanis' Techcrunch 20 might be good enough as a launchpad for common-or-garden startups; but, for his insanely ambitious Mahalo, only All Things Digital will do.

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