PALO ALTO, CA--There are nearly 30 start ups promoting their wares today as part of AlwaysOn's Stanford Summit--and that's just before lunch. Many have been profiled by Webware in the past, but I wanted to take some time to dig into two of my personal favorites from this morning's CEO presentations. MyTrybe. This is a behind the scenes service for site owners who want to add recommendation features...

Updated at 11 a.m. PT with more detail and background, plus a screenshot. Think you are an expert on a subject? Well, Google's got a proposition for you. Google's Wikipedia competitor, Knol, was opened to the public on Wednesday morning, according to the Official Google Blog. So-called knols are articles about specific topics written by experts on that subject. What makes Knol different from Wikipe...

Perhaps it's a sign of an economy on the brink: I'm getting pitches for sites about crime. This week I heard from reps of both CrimeReports.com and CriminalSearches.com. Together, their services will help you find crime and criminals, let you look for police records on anyone, and illustrate how pervasive crime is in every community in the U.S. All these crime reporting services take their data fro...

Zynga, which specializes in games for social-networking sites, has received $29 million in a new funding round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Institutional Venture Partners. The round, announced Wednesday, also includes funding from previous investors Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, and Avalon Ventures. Zynga, based in San Francisco and started by Tribe.net social-network founder...

Facebook is hosting its second F8 developers' conference today in San Francisco. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to give a keynote at 1:30 p.m. PDT. I'll be live blogging his talk here. Facebook will host a video stream. Highlights of the talk will likely be Facebook's new design, a discussion on openness, mobility, and monetization. I'll also be talking to developers at the conference to...