Robotics is advancing by leaps and bounds, in no small part because of the superb FIRST robotics competition launched by Dean Kamen in 1989.

A new development with value to the future of publishing is Boxie, the Story-Gathering Robot, invented by Alexander Reben at the renowned M.I.T. Media Lab. Boxie is a robotic journalist; it could handle those “man on the street” videos with ease. (more…)

Over at PressThink Jay Rosen observed that professional journalism has been optimized for low participation. He explains that “until a few years ago, the ‘job’ of the user was simply to receive the news and maybe send a letter to the editor.” This was a logical outcome of the available technology. “Journalists built their practices on top of a one-way, one-to-many, broadcasting system,” he noted. (more…)

In The Wall Street Journal today the ever-reliable Walt Mossberg reviews the first Google Chrome computers. Of course the first version ain’t very good, and they really screwed up on the pricing. But it is the future (or part of it, anyway). (more…)

With little fanfare the Columbia Journalism Review yesterday released the most intelligent and insightful report I’ve yet read on the business of digital journalism. The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism is the understated title of the must-read new report on the news business. Implicit in the report is a call to action: as Thich Nhat Hanh has observed, “Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?”

I’ve only read three chapters and if that’s all there was I’d still be crowing: start reading, NOW. (The full 143-page report is available for free download. What a gift.) (more…)

While reading the latest financials from Martha Stewart I realized that her template could be applied to most long-time publishing organizations today. Revenue up, profit down. The only thing unusual about Ms. Stewart’s story is the “revenue up” portion. More often I read “revenue down, profit down.” Digital widgets generally sell for less than their analog predecessors.

Digital ad sales at MS rose 55% (print advertising squeezed out a 2% increase). Unique website visitors were up 42%. Pageviews up 29%. The result? A net operating loss of 5% of publishing revenues (admittedly an improvement from 8% last year).

Charles Koppelman, Executive Chairman and Principal Executive Officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, offers an excellent stock phrase: “We believe the transformation of the company is beginning to take hold as we seek to broaden our portfolio…We feel we’re positioned to deliver profitable growth as we execute on our business plan in 2011 and beyond.” Good, no?

Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis has an excellent post this week called “Hard economic lessons for news.” He’s got rules, reality checks and more rules. And then something called “Opportunities.” If you’re in the newspaper business. you might want to take a Valium before reading it – you wont feel encouraged. Jeff talks only about the squishy stuff: “engagement,” “networks,” “value added,” “other revenue streams worth exploring” and “collaboration.” OK, there’s one notation on good old “infrastructure.”

Jeez, Jeff. I thought you were going to tell us about opportunities.

But, keep in mind, today Microsoft announced that it had a $726 million loss from online operations in Q3, staying on track to losing $3.5b (yep, billion) in the full fiscal year. Only Apple makes online look easy.

(Can’t resist: Yahoo previously demonstrated how to lose $3.5 billion in a single acquisition, Geocities.)