Syntagma Digital
Editor, John Evans

Syntagma Digital Launches Global Warming Latest

Syntagma Digital is delighted to unveil the latest webtitle in our 21st-century Phi network magazine. It is Global Warming Latest, a sceptical/skeptical look at all things climate change.

The author of the site is Andrea Paulsen, who takes a keen interest in global warming and the blood-curdling pronouncements of scientific opinion. She agrees that this is a hugely interesting area of research, but that all is not always what it seems.

Anyway, I’ve had my say here in Syntagma, so it’s over to Andrea for a more forensic, in-depth coverage of this fascinating subject.

Read Global Warming Latest.

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Twenty Million Bucks to Build a Digital Network

After the initial rush of blood to the head about “blog networks”, we at Syntagma have settled into a cautious optimism about what I now call digital networks.

However, I’m sometimes accused of selling the “industry” down the river when I criticize common assumptions on these hybrid creations. I’d prefer to be realistic about the content business in general, and build out steadily from solid ground than snowboard on the pistes of popular enthusiasm.

So I’m always interested when a voice of real experience — in print and digital — speaks out on the subject. Jason Calacanis has been interviewed by Businessweek in connection with John Battelle’s Federated Media, a “repping company” which sells digital advertising space in return for 40pc of the gross.

First, how are blog networks developing?

” … three ways: everyone is doing [it], advertisers love it, and consumers have embraced reading them on a daily basis. … only two networks ever reached any scale: Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker Media. The other blog networks are not even close to the traffic of the two winners.”

That is undoubtedly true. We’ve seen many a quick, noisy startup fade noiselessly away. Why have so many failed?

“I think what’s happened now is the window for a network has closed as the top slots in gossip, tech, autos, video games, etc. have filled.”

I’ve been saying that for a while now. Look at Autoblog and Engadget and imagine trying to compete. So how many blog networks have scaled up?

“Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker are the two biggest. Nothing else even comes close. I mean, B5 Media raised some money [$2m] but can you name their top blog?”

How much would it cost to build a new Weblogs, Inc?

“It would take a $20M investment to build a network to compete with Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker. I don’t see anyone investing that much. So, I think the window is closed for a scale blog network.”

I totally agree with that and have been saying so for quite some time. For example, when we decided to aim exclusively at the big retail markets, even teaming up with a retail consultancy for a while, the costs of market drive were horrendous, with no guarantees of success.

We discovered a thick glass ceiling between being a successful mid-sized network and blasting into the mainstream with heavyweight, stable advertisers.

Syntagma Media had a few offers of creative partnerships to take the project forward, but my innate caution about bubbly markets made us turn away from them in the end.

So, what should be the future gameplan for a mid-market digital network like Syntagma?

1. Differentiate yourselves from the pack.
2. Drop all the nerdy names that go with the territory.
3. Forget “blog” network, become a digital network.
4. Replace blogs as a unit and talk about webtitles.
5. Never mind “channels”, carve out network magazines that everybody will understand.
6. Do this slowly and thoughtfully, not grabbing at the straws of fickle opinion from people with a vested interest in selling you stuff.
7. Above all, use careful cash-flow techniques to amass your strength.
8. Don’t sell your creation in bits for money that must be spent, however few the opportunities.
9. Back up the digital with a print presence so that each can support the other with joint projects.
10. Always aim to be exceptional.

You won’t end up with Weblogs, Inc., but then that always was a deceptive model, since it was built around a handful of powerful weblogs started when there was no competition.

But as publishers, both Jason and Nick Denton of Gawker have proved their worth, as you would expect from people arriving from the print world. What they also proved is that, ultimately, being the Next Big Thing is more trouble than it’s worth.

Update: Jason adds to his critique of the “b5 model” in a comment over at The Blog Herald : “b5 media has great people, and I don’t mean to pick on them, but it’s the wrong model. I know this because I tried it back in the early days of WIN.”

Strong stuff, but it underlies my points above that wide, blog networks need to evolve into something different to stay ahead of the game.

Update 2: Jeremy Wright has replied at great length to Jason’s critique of the b5 model. It’s well worth a read. “… the truth is that both Nick and Jason came at this as a publishing play. Which is fine. That’s their background. It’s how they do things. It’s worked in the past, and it worked this time around. … When we started b5media, we didn’t do it as a publishing play. We did it as a community play.”

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Phi Template Unveiled on F1 Latest

Syntagma Digital’s new 21st-century Phi template has been unveiled on our Formula 1 Latest webtitle.

Designed as always by Thord Hedengren, Phi is the last theme to be launched in our new styling round.

We will be unrolling the four themes across the Syntagma network over the new week or two.

See Phi at F1 Latest here.

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LifeTimes Template Launched on Royal Anecdotes

For a first viewing of our LifeTimes template take a look at our Royal Anecdotes site.

This theme will power all our webtitles that are part of Syntagma Digital’s LifeTimes network magazine. The magazine covers lifestyles and celebrities.

Designed by Thord Hedengren as part of a comprehensive restyling of Syntagma’s inventory, the theme is one of four, with one more to be launched : 21st-century Phi.

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Guy Adams Joins Syntagma Digital

Syntagma Digital Authors

We are delighted to welcome well-known author and actor Guy Adams to the fold of Syntagma Digital authors. He will be writing two webtitles for Allusionz network magazine and one for LifeTimes magazine before the end of February :

1. Life in Spain — Guy lives in the Costa Blanca.
2. An author’s life — he is now a full-time author and publisher.
3. The horror genre — He’s an aficionado of horror writing.

His blurb states : “Guy Adams collects careers like baseball cards. In his, surprisingly limited, time he has tried his hand at Museum Curator, Tour Guide, Historical Researcher, Newsagent. His main occupations however have always been acting and writing. In the former he has mugged people in Emmerdale [An ITV soap], watched rugby in Where The Heart Is [Another ITV soap] and … oh … lots of other things.”

Lately, he’s become better known as an author. His current novels are, Deadbeat: Dogs of Waugh, Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger and More Than This. All are for sale on the Humdrumming website.

We look forward to launching Guy’s three sites in coming weeks.

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Marshall Sponder - NYC Artist and Webmaster

Syntagma Digital Authors

Now there’s versatility for you, bridging the “two cultures” of art and science in New York City, a place built on versatile personalities.

Marshall Sponder tours the galleries and exhibitions of the Big Apple reporting back on the latest pictures and buzz for our Art NYC site, which is rapidly gaining a huge reputation in art circles around the city.

Here’s Marshall painting his own portrait :

Apart from working as a Web analyst for IBM, Marshall also has a thriving interest in his own painting, which he throws himself into at the Brooklyn Artists Gym. Of his self-portrait he says :

“I did make it over to Brooklyn Artists Gym this afternoon and ended up doing a self portrait. Here’s a picture Peter Wallace, owner and manager of BAG took of me with my SideKick 3 camera. I feel this painting, self portrait, is one of my best. The photo is decent — but many of the subtleties are not showing up in the digital picture — the work is much richer when looking at it — and some of the lighting I captured on my face looks more arbitrary in the photo than in real life.”

If you really can’t get enough of art in New York City, Marshall’s spot is the place to be.

Art NYC is part of our Allusionz network magazine.

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Change and the Changelings

Updated 18.00 GMT

The top of the main ITN news bulletin last evening was taken up with a ten-minute, blood-curdling feature on the cataclysms to come, anytime now, through Climate Change. It was predicated on a report released yesterday in Paris which is said to be the most detailed study ever made of the problem.

This got me thinking about the nature of change and how much of it is illusory.

Take digital TV, for example. With analogue technology, only four or five television channels can be transmitted by the incoming signal. With digital, 100 or more can arrive at your set-top box. How does that happen?

DigTV has a sharp computer at the transmitter end which analyses every pixel screened before a refresh. Only those pixels which are changing are sent to the receiver. In analogue systems, the whole screen is refreshed every time — hence the difference in channel numbers.

Imagine we had such a computer analysing every moment of real life and outputting to us what’s really changing and what’s not. It would make an immense difference for the better in all our lives.

Politicians would have no excuse for spending our money in truckloads on supposed modernization projects. Business leaders would not be able to sell us “breakthrough” technology that’s just a rehash of what went before. Teachers would be lost for reasons to change core curriculums on the pretext of social change, much of which derives from opinion rather than necessity.

In that situation, the world would be a far less frenetic and alarming place.

On the other side of the coin, fundamentalists of all kinds, who cling to ancient texts and forms of words as if their lives depended on it, would be reassured that the world was not so dangerous or insulting after all. We can all go with gradual change on a step by step basis. It’s the madhouse rush that spooks us.

Most real change occurs in cycles, some rapid, some slower, many long term and most returning to base at the end of every cycle. Human intervention probably just changes the baseline a bit. We are an integral part of Nature, after all, and its most conscious part.

If you pointed a time-lapse camera at the Rockies or the Alps for ten million years, taking one frame every year, the resulting film would show mountains moving like water — in fact, they would probably be indistinguishable from what we know as the sea. As the philosopher Heraclitus said, everything is composed of water.

Back in the 16th century, the northern hemisphere went through a “Little Ice Age” (see below). Every winter the Thames would freeze over in London. Paintings of the period show people ice skating on the river. Today, that’s unthinkable, but it happened. There has always been climate change, even before motor vehicles and industrialization.

Western Europe experienced a general cooling of the climate between the years 1150 and 1460 and a very cold climate between 1560 and 1850 that brought dire consequences to its peoples. The colder weather impacted agriculture, health, economics, social strife, emigration, and even art and literature. Increased glaciation and storms also had a devastating affect on those that lived near glaciers and the sea.

Is today’s change due to human depredation on the planet, as the changelings would have us believe?

Look at the psychology of many of them. They mainly follow the new religion of Scientism, the fundamentalism of the egghead. Every dot and comma of Darwin is their text. There is no alternative. Exceptions can never be admitted. This is a strict faith by any measure, a counter-culture to what we think of as Faith. Only the narrow band of materialism is “true”. All else are brain episodes involving random microcurrents.

Like all people who think they’re totally right about everything, they are natural-born totalitarians, brooking no substitutes, no other worldviews. They have analogue minds down which only a few channels can ever enter. Everything must always be changed all at once.

Have you noticed how we are suddenly being demonized for getting on an aeroplane, even though aircraft only account for 2% of global warming according to the know-alls who control our minds? We each have been alloted something called a “carbon footprint” which demands we plant trees to “offset” almost everything we do. Where does the average person plant trees? In the park? They wouldn’t last very long in any park I know.

If they could only stand back and watch the world through the screen of a discriminating computer that separated real change from the illusory, they would be in for a shock.

But then that word “discrimination” would not be permitted in their lexicon except to describe what they see as evil. By that I mean, anything that allows them to behave in an obsessive, hysterical, neurotric, going-on-psychotic way and force that behaviour on the rest of us. Will we never learn to avoid certain types of behaviour pattern when it comes to making critical decisions?

So, yes, there certainly is climate change, and who can doubt that our pollution counts for some of it. But a single volcanic eruption can make entire summers disappear for years, and a major asteroid strike can have an even more devastating effect on life.

We should clean up our act for the very simple reason that a non-polluted planet is a better place to live than one with smoke in the air. Nobody really knows what’s going on in the atmosphere until they understand its long-term cyclical movements and how these relate to other cycles, including those of our own making. We really do need that discriminating computer.

A period of calm reflection is required now. The frantic scientific changelings should be asked to shut up.

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Design Updates

Thanks to all who have taken the trouble to email and otherwise comment on our new design. Feedback is like gold dust in projects like this, as we obviously want to get it absolutely right.

Following a number of suggestions, we’ve now centered the site on the page. Duncan Riley emailed to say it looked odd on a 22 inch screen. So for all you 22 inchers out there — and there can’t be many — look straight ahead and you’ll see it.

We have also closed the dark tunnel of the comments box and let in a bit of light. You can now see your cursor as you type. So type away!

Apart from a couple of links to fix in the footer, one to the complete network list, it’s just about done.

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New Syntagma Design is Live

If you hadn’t noticed, you must be blind. Sorry, visually impaired.

The new Syntagma Digital design is up. This is the neutral template for sites that don’t fit snugly into one of our three network magazines. You can see an Allusionz template here.

We’ll be unrolling the Phi and LifeTimes themes tomorrow on some of the sites, and all the others in time.

Thanks to Thord Hedengren for a fantastic job. He really is a pro, not only technically, but in terms of design too.

More later.

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