Everyone’s getting jumpy about bird ‘flu nowadays. It’s the top story on TV news almost every day. We’ve become a race of ornithologists.

Here in England, we call bird-watchers “twitchers”. An appropriate name since everyone’s very twitchy over birds right now.

Not surprising perhaps: the latest European case of bird ‘flu in wild birds was discovered just 70 miles away from Syntagma Towers, across the English Channel in northern France. It really is that close.

Yesterday, a peculiar incident occurred here, one that was unsettling for a number of reasons. The cause of this incident? : a chicken.

I was inadvertently responsible for the event, which saw our quiet, semi-rural area invaded by a whole squad of police officers. Here’s the story:

I went out in the morning as usual to get my daily newspaper. As I passed through the back garden gate into the lane beyond, I saw a chicken — a Rhode Island Red for any twitchers among us. It was walking down the lane away from me and looked rather lost. We get a lot of pheasants and other game birds around here, but I’d never seen a domestic fowl in the lane before.

On the other side of the lane there’s an enclosed field of an acre or two. I assumed the bird had got up on the wall and fluttered down. Normally, I would have picked it up and thrown it back over, but something stopped me. I’d read that bird ‘flu can’t be passed to humans through the air, but is mainly caught by direct contact with their wings and droppings. If the hen was infected, picking the thing up might have been fatal, especially as the bird seemed disorientated.

So, I walked slowly behind it as it clucked and hopped — alarmed at my presence — out into the road. Off I went to the shop, thinking it would find its own way back to the field.

When I returned ten minutes later, the road was full of policemen in urgent conflab, some doing house-to-house calls. I should point out that if your home is burgled these days, you’ll be lucky to get a single cop for hours. Now here was an army of them mustering for a single chicken.

Had I been transported into a Wallace and Grommit movie? Or an Aesop Fable? It’s now clear to me that if you want the police to call, just cry fowl. The authorities around here are as twitchy as the twitchers.

Will this really turn into a worldwide deathfest? Will humans be dropping like nine-pins, foaming at the mouth and uttering strange clucking sounds? Will Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, The Birds, come strangely to life, with human populations cowering in fear at the flapping of wings? Will fluffy little sparrows take on the aspect of the pterodactyl? Only a true seer knows the answer to these questions, so Syntagma turned to our resident psychic for guidance.

I’ve written about Jonathan Cainer, an astrologer, a few times before, ever since he was uncannily accurate over the London bombings last year. He’s remarkably frank in his predictions of world events, taking his professional life in his hands every time, it seems to me. What does he have to say about bird ‘flu:

“Bird Flu is not going to be a problem on anywhere near the scale that some folk fear. Nor, though, is it an entirely false alarm.” There will not be a pandemic, he says. Like CJD following the BSE outbreak, a few may die, but not many.

After the chicken incident yesterday, though, I fear we already have a pandemic. A pandemic of panic.

Cover of Writers’ Blog Anthology 2006.

Writers’ Blog Alliance, a part of Syntagma Media, has produced The Writers’ Blog Anthology 2006. It is currently in ebook form only, but editor Deborah Woehr is negotiating its publication in book form.

The anthology comprises blog posts from WBA members during 2005, and is really a feast of original writing by writers who use blogging as both a tool of their trade and as a literary genre in its own right.

As a professional publication it’s pioneering a new form of content distribution: writing–to blog–to print.

Depending on contract, the ebook may be sold directly from the WBA site. Syntagma will keep you informed.

As a follow-up, WBA is also producing a short story collection by members called, Naked Tales, Short Stories by Writers who Blog.

Stay tuned for more information.

Blog Network List has updated its stats for blog networks.

Syntagma Media is ranked 50 in the list, with an estimated value of around $100,000.

That represents steady progress, though it was compiled just before the weekend’s Google PageRank update, so may already be lagging the curve.

Other interesting points: b5media now has 108 blogs and a value of $5million+. It’s ranked 24 on the list. With four owners and a steep ongoing cost structure, it still represents good value-accrual for the b5ers.

Nick Denton’s Gawker Media is ranked number one, but has only 15 blogs valued at $19million+. So, does size matter in this business? Clearly cheek matters even more.

Jason Calacanis/AOL’s Weblogs Inc is number 3, valued at $30million, roughly what AOL paid for it. This is a quiet time for the network, but, when you’re ahead of the game financially, why make waves?

Overall, it’s clear that blog networks are good business. Two types of networks will survive under present circumstances: those that make money, and those that don’t necessarily need to make money. High costs relative to income is what brings down most businesses in the end. Syntagma Media is well placed in this regard.

Now that we’re in the midst of another PageRank update, it may be just the right time to consider the system used to produce this arcane operation. We know that someone hits a big red button at the Googleplex to get the whole thing underway. But, does anyone shout into the Tannoy: “Let loose the algorithms!”. No, too Shakespearean for Stanford.

So how’s it done and how did the system evolve? The following is a piece I wrote for another platform:

Back in the dimly-remembered mists of the 1990s, the two mythical founders of Google, Romulus and Remus Larry Page and Sergey Brin, latched onto the citation system in academic publishing as a way of mapping and, ultimately, controlling the sprawling growth of the Internet. In many ways they could be compared to Capability Brown who turned wild nature into rolling parkland back in 18th-century England.

The legend has it that at Silicon Valley’s Stanford University, Page saw literary citations as a software opportunity for the Web. Nowadays, it’s hard to see beyond the system he produced: first BackRub, a way of measuring backlinks to articles and sites, and then PageRank, the most addictive element in Web oneupmanship. Has that system really served us well?

Academic books, monographs, and journal papers have become vast collections of citations. Many books are now almost unreadable, since their sole purpose is to show off the reading of the author. University contracts stipulate that dons, lecturers and professors must publish regularly on their subject or face isolation and career meltdown. The necessity to publish or be damned has driven down the quality of academic publishing for years. Compare and contrast an academic book on a specific topic with the trade-publishing equivalent written by a competent professional author. There really is no comparison on quality, readability, range and breadth of aspiration. Authors trounce academics every time.

Many academic tomes are just webs of citations. Why, though, are we better served by knowing what hundreds of other people have written, rather than the authors themselves? Many citations point to arguments absorbed from other sources in any case. So we’re taken round in circles within the discipline covered.

Thanks to Google, the Web now has the same problem. To gain Googlejuice you have to cite and cite regularly and relevantly. The blogosphere, in particular, is a madhouse of clickability. Click, click, clickety-click it rattles on day and night, a cacophonous syncopation counterpointing the melody from Google’s cash tills.

The genius of Google is that it didn’t just transfer the bane of academic publishing onto the Web, but that it discovered how it could profit enormously from the process.

Will the next big entrant — the Google of the future — take us away from the Groves of Academe to a less cluttered way of measuring our worth and relevance? Or is the interconnectivity of the blogosphere in particular, the very essence of what it is?

Well, Syntagma asked for it and, after a four month wait, the update is now in progress.

The PRs are not showing as I write, but Future Page Rank is showing 5s across the board for Syntagma Media, and a 4 for Syntagma, which was a 5 on its previous domain.

So, that’s good for us. We can now set about expanding the commercial base for the network and maybe even get a look in on Memeorandum. Here’s lookin’ at you kid.

Yes, you can be a toff for a day every day here at Syntagma Media. If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a Hooray Henry, a Burlington Bertie, or a Landed Larrikin, just swing on over to the most toffee-nosed blogs in the Poshosphere. Here are a few initial suggestions:

Sample the japes of Guy Pelly, pal of Princes William and Harry.

Discover how Kate Middleton won a Channel4 poll on finding a wife for Prince William … Just.

Marvel as a cousin to the Queen, Lord Strathmore, becomes an ironmonger.

Be amazed as Earl Spencer, Diana’s brother, opens the ancestral home for weddings and posh do’s.

You know you want to!

The Blog Herald has been sold at last. Duncan Riley has posted on the sale without giving much away:

As written about elsewhere The Blog Herald has sold. Due to the contract I am not at liberty to discuss the buyer or the amount of the sale unless given permission by the new owners. Settlement, all things being equal is set for early March so I’ll still be around for a while. Not sure yet whether I’ll be required to be writing here after that for any length of time as this is still subject to discussion.

Syntagma has heard a whisper that BH sold for $30-40k, roughly half the initial accepted bid.

Apparently, the buyer avoided the sitepoint auction and the agent and approached Duncan directly.

Blog Herald seems to have sold on a multiple of its monthly income rather than on its special place in the blogosphere, or its potential as a media property of the future.

That must be disappointing for Duncan, though he will probably be relieved he can finish building his house now.

It’s a blogging adage that a neglected blog gathers no moss. Even a week’s holiday can make a big difference to traffic levels. Stop posting for a month and human traffic will stop altogether.

I make the distinction between “human” traffic — people who choose to come — and search and spam traffic which is herded in by machine. The latter will always come while there’s a stack of content to attract it. But it’s human traffic I’m concerned with here.

Take my old blogging chum Clive Allen. Clive is an English writer now living in the Great Plains of Oklahoma. His Gone Away blog has been a top “good read” for aeons (in blog time).

Then, a few months ago, he had a blogging crisis. He just couldn’t face all that effort; the dreaded bloggers’ block set in. I should point out that Clive tends to write long, literary, and meticulously-edited posts which take a lot of effort to sustain.

Gone Away always had a thriving and lively community of commenters, many just marvelling at the quality of his writing and the range of topics — no niche stuff here.

After a month or so of neglect, that community has all but vanished. Even a good post now only drags in a few diehards and wayward insomniacs. It’s a good example of what blog neglect does to even the best crafted of blogs.

I expect he’ll write a witty and superior reply to this post, which will, at least, get some of the energy back into a great blog. You can be gone away too long, Clive.

Syntagma Media is sometimes criticized for having such an eclectic mix of blogs. Only one gadget blog, a few technical and company blogs, and lots of fuzzy stuff that won’t get read.

Well, doing my regular assessment of the performance of the blogs, that view is completely turned on its head.

Taking three parameters: Traffic, Adsense clicks and Adsense revenue, gives three entirely different results. Syntagma is well ahead on traffic, however you measure that, but low on clicks and earnings.

Way out ahead on clicks is Royal Anecdotes: twice as many as its nearest competitor, Spiritual Nirvana.

Spiritual Nirvana, however, earns more per click and is slightly ahead on total earnings.

Supernatural comes in a good third.

So it’s the “fuzzy” ones that are doing best, at least in terms of returns on effort expended. The top three blogs for Adsense revenues are:

1. Spiritual Nirvana
2. Royal Anecdotes (most clicks)
3. Supernatural.

Digital Camera Latest comes in fourth, but is ahead on affiliate earnings, especially from Amazon.

So it’s a mixed picture. But isn’t it interesting that the most successful blogs are not the ones most people would assume?