Knowledge Networks is run by two Stanford political scientists, Norman Nie and Douglas Rivers. They give folks computers in return for filling out surveys, which they use for marketing and academic research. Nie is rather famous in another respect--way back in the 1960s, when he was a graduate student at Stanford (before going to Chicago, where he spent most of his illustrious academic career), he and a few other political science grad students invented SPSS, which was the most widely used statistical software in both academics (until they priced themselves out of the market) and business (may still be true).