TECH CHRONICLES / A daily dose of postings from The Chronicle's technology blog (sfgate.com/blogs/tech)

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Facebook executive director graduating to VC firm

Matt Cohler, one of Facebook's earlier hires, is leaving the Palo Alto social-networking startup for a occupation at a Silicon Valley venture working capital firm.

Facebook made the proclamation Thursday. Cohler, frailty president of merchandise direction at Facebook, will autumn in Benchmark Capital as a general spouse in the fall. But he'll remain in touching with Facebook as a particular advisor to Facebook laminitis and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and the senior direction team.

The 31-year-old executive already have A jammed resume: He was a initiation member of LinkedIn, the Mountain Position societal web recently valued at $1 billion; served as a adviser for McKinsey; and worked in Peking at AsiaInfo Holdings Inc., a telecom company that helped construct China's Internet infrastructure.

Said Zuckerberg in a statement: Cohler "has been an of import subscriber to Facebook's growing and success."

- Ellen Lee
GM, museums among robo-cars' admirers

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which most famously sponsored the early research behind the Internet, have lit a fire under robotics in recent old age by sponsoring a series of driverless auto races meant to develop crash-avoidance sensors and software.

Now, two of DARPA's title-holder robo-cars are back in the news. General Motors Corp. said Thursday that it will put $5 million in a five-year joint research undertaking with Dale Carnegie Andrew Mellon University, whose "Boss" robo-car won a race held last twelvemonth in a citylike setting.

"Imagine being virtually chauffeured in your auto while doing your e-mail, eating breakfast and watching the news," gram Frailty President for Research Larry George Burns said in a statement. "The work we're doing with Dale Carnegie Andrew Mellon is a large stepping rock toward making this a reality."

Stanford University's "Stanley" - the robo-car that South Korean won a 2005 dash across the Mohave Desert - is making a monthlong cavity halt at the Technical School Museum of Invention in San Jose before going on show at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Stanley, a Volkswagen guided by self-driving software developed at Stanford, just returned from a planetary triumph lap that took it to Singapore, Johannesburg and Munich. Until July 17, it will be strutting its stuff, for free, at San Jose's Technical School before being sent to rest on its award at the newly renovated Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

- Uncle Tom Abate
ITunes atop the human race of music retailing

Earlier this year, iTues leapfrogged into the No. One place as the nation's top music retailer, surpassing even Wal-Mart, according to NPD. The iTunes Shop offers more than than 8 million songs for sale online.

Apple, the Cupertino shaper of the iPod and iPhone, also said it is renting or merchandising 50,000 movies per day.

- Ellen Lee
HP to consolidate its printing businesses

Print 2.0, Hewlett-Packard's transmutation of its printing business, continues. The company said it is consolidating five of its printing groupings into three units of measurement with an oculus toward streamlining the concern around certain key client segments.

The move affects foldable HP's stores grouping into the remaining units of measurement and combining the endeavor grouping with the ink jet plane unit. That assists horsepower focusing on three markets: consumers and little businesses, enterprise, and commercial printing and graphics.

HP said the reorganisation was not aimed at eliminating jobs. There will be a rebalancing of resources to suit the changes, the company said.

HP have been remaking its black and white concern over the last twelvemonth since it announced its Print 2.0 strategy. It's moving away from being just a shaper of pressmen to being a printing company that supplies a assortment of hardware and solutions for all kinds of customers.

One of the big countries of growth, which this reorg addresses, is the chance in large graphical and commercial printing jobs, such as as signs, hoardings and publications. horsepower have said that the small-scale printing it's been known for in the past brands up lone 15 percentage of the millions of pages printed each year.

- Ryan Kim