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

sfgate_get_fprefs();
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

The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:00 Prime Minister PDT

Recommend this story?

Please Wait...

The same inquiry people used to inquire about PCs can be asked of societal networks: Were our lives easier or harder, better or worse, simpler or more than complex, before they came around? The reply is yes. For some folks, societal networking land sites such as as Facebook and MySpace look nearly as indispensable as e-mail, but creating and maintaining these practical circles of friends turns out to be quite a spot of work, often necessarily so. Here are the 10 things that bug me most about today's societal networking services. 10. MySpace Kitsch

Ning, which allows you put up your ain usage societal network, have attracted attending for its ability to make communities that are more than functional than those created through competing services from Google and Yahoo. Nonprofits, support groups, and hobbyists have got establish their places on Ning. But, as with many new vicinities on the Web, the seedier side of the civilization is often the first to travel in. As on Second Life, pornography reportedly consists a important per centum of the communities Ning hosts. Flickr confronts a similar issue, but it shields unsuspicious visitants from seeing grownup content through default filters (that is, you must actively choose out of the filter). Ning offers no such as setting, which do the land site tough to urge to schools and families.

Google helps the web to go social - BBC News

Google have joined the thrust to do the web more societal by introducing tools to enable people to interact with their friends.

Friend Connect follows programs announced last hebdomad by the world's two greatest societal networking sites, MySpace and Facebook.

Data Handiness and Connect allow users move their personal profiles and applications to other websites.

"Social is in the air," states Google's manager of technology Saint David Glazer.

During a conference phone call at Google's Golden State headquarters, Mister Glasscutter told reporters: "Google Friend Connect is about being the 'long tail' of land land sites becoming more than social."

"Many sites aren't explicitly societal and don't necessarily desire to be societal networks, but they still profit from letting their visitants interact with each other. That used to be hard."

Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester, told BBC News: "Google is tapping into the 'all things social' heat energy of the moment, but it's adding a different perspective, not as a information beginning and societal web 'owner' but as an enabler."

Gamut of uses

At the bosom of Google's service is the usage of Open Sociable which will let 3rd political parties to construct and develop applications for the site.

Sociable networking is going mainstream

Saint David GlazerGoogle

The company states with Friend Connect, any website proprietor can add a snipping of codification to his or her land site and acquire societal characteristics up and running right away without any complicated programming. This volition tally the gamut from invitations to member's gallery and from message walls to reviews.

In an illustration of how it will all work, Google cited fans of independent instrumentalist Ingrid Michaelson who can now link with other fans without having to go forth the site.

Visitors will be able to see remarks by friends from their societal networks, add music to their profiles and see who is attending concerts all at Ingrid's website.

"Social networking is going mainstream. It used to be proprietary, but now it's going to be unfastened and adust into the substructure of the net, not just one land site or one source," states Mister Glazer.

Walled garden

MySpace was first out of the gate when it announced programs last Thursday to loosen its clasp on the estimated 200 million personal profiles its users shop on its site.

Data Handiness will let members to share choice information with four partners, Yahoo. PhotoBucket, Chirrup and eBay.

Google doesn't make anything without thought about... how can it profit Google

Charlene LiPrincipal analyst, Forrester

Essentially the user will still be tied to MySpace which takes to set itself at the Centre of the web by encouraging users to hive away all of their core information at the land site to get with.

One twenty-four hours later Facebook entered the affray with a service called Connect.

With its 70 million users worldwide, their programs differ from MySpace by allowing users to take their personal profiles to any website that desires to host them and not just the land sites that have got partnered up.

So what's driving this move to level the so-called "walled garden" where societal networking land sites have got jealously guarded their users profiles?

Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester told BBC News in the end it all come ups down to money.

"It's a smart travel by Google which is trying to play the function of United Nations secretary full general by making certain everyone negotiation nicely to one another, getting the information to where they desire to move it back and forward, and take part in unfastened standards.

"Remember Google doesn't make anything without thought about, not only how can this net income the bigger community, but how can it benefit Google."

As 99% of land sites are not currently socially enabled, Friend Connect have a large potentiality marketplace in presence of it and Multiple Sclerosis Lithium states the path to all things profitable in this space will be through tapping into "the deep profit and user information flowing through Friend Connect."

In other words, excavation that information through advertising.

Google is being cautious about approving land sites to utilize the new codification and is creating a waiting listing for petitions to utilize Friend Connect. It states it anticipates to give the spell ahead to a few tons land sites in the adjacent few days.

As to gap out to a wider audience, Google states it gauges that volition go on over the approaching months.

Meanwhile MySpace and Facebook expect rolling out their offers over the adjacent few weeks.

Facebook lures Google executive / She will help on overseas expansion, ad sales

sfgate_get_fprefs();

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is not stepping aside for a head executive director as Larry Page and Sergey Brin did at Google or as Kraut Yang and Saint David Filo did at Yahoo. He is following the Bill Bill Gates theoretical account and retention the top station as he engages a Google executive, Sheryl Sandberg, as main operating officer.

Sandberg, currently frailty president for planetary online gross sales and trading operations at Google, joined the hunt giant in 2001 and helped to develop its immensely moneymaking online advertisement programs, AdWords and AdSense. She will fall in Facebook this calendar month to work closely with Zuckerberg, a co-founder of Facebook, the company said Tuesday.

"A large subject of this hire is that there are parts of our trading operations that to utilize a pretty trite phrase, demand to be taken to the adjacent level," Zuckerberg said in an interview. Sandberg volition assist Facebook spread out abroad and develop an advertisement web that will aid warrant its $15 billion valuation, put last twelvemonth when Microsoft invested $240 million for 1.6 percentage of the company. She will also supervise Facebook's marketing, human resources and privateness sections - essentially guiding how Facebook shows itself and its purposes to the outside world.

Sandberg's going is a blow to Google, where she was a well-regarded executive. "Sheryl was a valued member of the Google team, and we wish her well in her new endeavors," Omid Kordestani, Google's senior frailty president for planetary gross sales and concern development, said in an e-mail statement.

Kordestani said Saint David Hans Fischer will take over Sandberg's job. Hans Fischer was frailty president for online gross sales and operation, reporting to Sandberg.

Facebook have more than than 66 million users and is growing rapidly, but the Palo Alto company have been dogged by unfavorable judgment over its concern practices. For example, its attempt to let advertizers to work the societal connexions between friends on a service called Beacon encountered stiff opposition from users.

"Communicating what we are about clearly is an of import thing for us to do," Zuckerberg said. "We can make that better, and Beacon showed that, as did a smattering of other things."

Zuckerberg had a head deputy sheriff once before. Robert Owen Avant Garde Natta, a former Amazon executive, held the statute title of main operating military military officer before he was given the narrower function of main gross officer last year. Last month, he announced he was leaving Facebook to prosecute chances as a head executive director elsewhere.

Zuckerberg is 23 and Sandberg is 38, but the age difference of the two executive directors did not stand up in the manner of a whirlwind professional person courtship. The brace met at a Christmastide political party in December. Roger McNamee, a outstanding venture rugged individualist and an investor and occasional advisor to Zuckerberg, helped agent ensuing conversations with a recommendation of Sandberg.

Zuckerberg and Sandberg then spent clip discussing Facebook's hereafter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January and over a series of dinners at Sandberg's place in Atherton.

Sandberg joined Google three old age before it went public, when it had only 260 employees. Like many veteran soldier Googlers, she is a multimillionaire. In edifice the online trading operations of AdWords and AdSense, the two programmes that accounted for the overpowering bulk of Google's $16.6 billion in 2007, she saw the size of her section crestless wave from four people to one thousands of employees.

She states Facebook today reminds her of Google back then. "For me, that is portion of the excitement," she said.

Before joining Google, Sandberg was main of staff to Lawrence Summers when he was Treasury secretary in the Bill Clinton administration. The experience in authorities could function Facebook well if the company again meets federal or state enquiries over its privateness policies.

Opera Upgrades Mobile Web Browser - InformationWeek

Opera Software on Tuesday unveiled the up-to-the-minute version of its mobile Web browser for commercial use; the browser includes sweetenings like zooming, panning, and Flash support.

Opera Mobile River 9.5 usages Opera's zoom along engineering to enlarge content on a Web page, and pages can be saved for offline browsing when there isn't an Internet connexion available. The new version also utilizes Opera's Presto rendition engine to rush up the burden of pages. Opera said it tweaked the engine to better public presentation by accelerating the handling of Web pages, even those coded using JavaScript and Ajax.

Additionally, version 9.5 supports appliances and Flash for accessing popular societal networks, such as as Facebook and MySpace. Equipment shapers and radio bearers have got the option to include Flash Lite 3 with Opera Mobile, giving their clients the ability to watch YouTube videos, for example, according to Opera.

Widgets are mini applications that sit down on a mobile device's place silver screen and can be accessed with a few clicks. Opera offers the capableness to add appliances in the new version. The company's end is to supply users with a desktop-like experience on little mobile device screens.

Opera Mobile River have been included in more than than 100 million telephones manufactured by HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and others, the company said. Software platform shaper UIQ also collaborated with telephone shapers to present Opera Mobile River 9.5 on future mobile phones.

The up-to-the-minute version is compatible with mobile telephones running the Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Linux platforms. It will be available as a standalone browser and as a software system development kit.

Opera didn't supply pricing, but as a comparing point, it bear downs $24 for earlier versions of the browser.

For those who don't desire to blast out money, Opera offers a free full-featured mobile browser called the Opera Mini. In November, the company of the Opera Mini, which can be viewed in desktop mode, meaning Web pages are displayed exactly as they look on a personal computer or laptop. Users also can access the content they desire by using the zoom along characteristic or choice Small Screen Rendition to avoid horizontal scrolling on a page.

Facebook Marketing - Facebook Advertising Guide

The human race of online selling is constantly changing. New techniques are being used and tested mundane and although most of them never work, a few of them do it to the mainstream. Online selling is an un-steady global and if you don't maintain up with the up-to-the-minute techniques, you could be left behind.

Of course of study the cants at the minute are Web 2.0 and societal marketing. These new selling techniques were said to be just a craze but there is no mark of them slowing down. Facebook, Myspace and Youtube are a few of the most visited land land sites on the Internet and their traffic rankings are catching up to the likes of Google fast.

But do you make the most of these valuable sites? Not so long ago, savvy Internet sellers were using Myspace to make a metric ton of valuable traffic, adding as many friends to their profiles as possible and promoting relevant products. Of course of study these years it's not that easy. People look to believe that societal selling is dieing down and becoming harder to net income from but I can guarantee that is completely the opposite.

Facebook have always been the 'golden egg' to the web 2.0 selling world. People knew there was an astonishing amount of traffic there but didn't have got a hint how to utilize or net income from it. Adroit sellers are now saying that not only is Facebook the new Google adwords but it can offer a Hell of a batch more - including ace targeted advertising, tight niche targeted groupings and concern and fan pages. The ways in which Facebook can be used for selling intents is immense and should definitely not be over looked.

How to make money online

Fifteen billion smackers: That's the value Microsoft recently slapped on Facebook when the computing machine giant invested $240 million for a 1.6 per cent interest in Mark Zuckerberg's online social-networking site.

Editor's Choice

You could seethe with envy--or you could chase after your ain luck on the web.

Some online concerns necessitate only a few hundred dollars in equipment, while others demand important hardware and perhaps even a warehouse. Some mightiness do you rich; others might just cover suds money. And all affect assorted degrees of time, working capital and technological skill.

"Some people have got got dreamed about owning their ain concern and have not followed through because of the investing in resources," states Jim Griffith, caput of eBay University, for those aiming to put up store merchandising commodity at the online auctioneer's site. "The cyberspace lets people to at least attempt without making a big initial investment."

Army veteran soldier Brandi Ramos of Springfield, Ill., did it. As a single ma in demand of other income, she started her online retail calling vending "big and tall" men's clothes on eBay.

Three old age later, Ramos, 32, do a good life workings online out of her 600-square-foot cellar packed with hanging shows and baker's racks piled with tupperware containing underclothes and belts. Ramos takes to offer speedy service, answering all e-mails within four to six hours. She claims to nett $25,000 on $100,000 gross sales a year, and even gains a few vaulting horses per order on shipping.

If managing stock list looks too large a chore, drama practical landlord and complaint other retail merchants monthly fees (or per-transaction fees) for the chance to marketplace their merchandises on your site. Amazon.com nabbed 28 per cent of its grosses this manner in 2006.

Craigslist is another return on this model: The 25-person company, deserving a reported $2 billion, complaints concerns to post aid wanted advertisements in San Francisco, New House Of House Of York and L.A.; it also accumulates fees for flat lists in New York City. Sum page positions per month: about 5 billion.

Then there's every pajama-clad blogger's dream: producing content supported by advertisement dollars. Selling advertisement is how one thousands of constituted online mass media mercantile establishments pay their electrical bills. They bear down advertizers two ways: by the figure of overall web pages (called "impressions") served up, and by the figure of people who chink on the ads. Setting up a blog necessitates not much more than than a basic publication program, a waiter and software system to track advertisement clicks. The difficult part, though, is attracting adequate orbs to do it deserving someone's piece to pay to publicize on your site.

To have got any supplication of attracting big advertisers, land sites necessitate to pull at least 500,000 alone visitants per month, states Saint David Hauslaib, publishing house of Jossip.com, A mass media and chitchat blog that counts Erythroxylon Coca Genus Cola and Sketchers among its advertisers. Sadly, even if you make bring forth adequate traffic, the "click-through" rates on advertisements be given to be quite low--in the vicinity of one one-half of 1 per cent.

Subscription-based exemplaries are even harder to crack. Unless your land site fulfills an pressing demand (for tangible investing ideas, a possible mate, etc.), users aren't likely to pay for the content.

One manner to earn subscription gross is to run a practical marketplace. These land sites accumulate by allowing purchasers and Sellers easy entree to each other. Many of these markets flamed out in the dot-com bust, but some persist. Mfg.com, for instance, fits equipment makers with littler constituent suppliers. Dating land sites like Match.com complaint subscription fees for entree to their members. And H2Bid.com golf course municipalities with wastewater-equipment vendors.

As with tangible existent estate, you can purchase practical secret plans (URL addresses), impudent them and do a buck. GoDaddy.com sells fresh sphere name calling for under $10 dollars apiece. To pull buyers, tally diagnostic tests to find how often certain key words are searched so that you can demo the likeliness that your uniform resource locator will show up in a Google or Yahoo! search. One tip: The best sphere name calling are short, sweet, specific and easy to remember.

As cyberspace use grows, so too will the edification of online concern models. Take 3-year-old Yoonew.com, which sells hereafters contracts on athletics tickets.

Fans purchase the right to take bringing of tickets if their squads do it to a desired playoff game, perhaps calendar months away. Given the uncertainness of the bet, those contracts sell for a fraction of the hereafter marketplace value of the implicit in tickets. If your squad do it to the large game, you've locked in a inexpensive seat; if it falls short, you lose that coverage premium.

Yoonew do money when the gross it accumulates from merchandising all those contracts transcends the cost of delivering a little figure of very expensive tickets on game days. The danger: If ticket terms spike, or there are no seating available, the company could endure a loss or estrange its customers.

Sure, you can do money online. But no 1 said it was easy.