"In 6 months, we’ve received over 2,700 plans. That’s about 20x what we received in a similar period last year. Out of that group, we’ve funded five companies." Honestly, I have no idea why Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy has decided to blog about the firm's iFund venture with Apple. KPCB is notorious for doing all its deals through insider connections, not by trolling for ideas on the Internet. (Apple board member Al Gore is also a partner at Kleiner Perkins, so it's not like the firm needs an in.) Murphy concludes, "Stay tuned for a future conversation on mobile monetization and navigating the tradeoffs of free versus paid applications." How about a conversation on navigating Apple's imperious rule of its App Store?

Outside the Gizmodo and ArsTechnica party last night, a rep was handing out postcards advertising her company's "analytics and advertising for iPhone apps." My first thought was, "Isn't Apple going to have first crack at that data, since they control the distribution of third-party applications?" My second: All the Facebook widgetmaker parties I've been avoiding will probably soon be replaced by parties for iPhone appmakers. Just look at Bart Decrem, fired former CEO of "social browser" Flock now jumping on the bandwagon with Tapulous, which has already developed dozens of apps for the shiny device.

At Apple's iPhone SDK announcement today, Steve Jobs had "one more thing..." to reveal. Venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins came onstage to announce a $100,000,000 "iFund" to help "young developers with funding." This is a huge amount of money for developers, but no details on how it will be invested or allocated. Compare this to the $10 million Android programming contest that Google introduced with its Android mobile phone platform. Thanks to the dedicated gadget-hounds at Gizmodo for the pic and info.