Syntagma Media is today launching a new Sub-Network, Money Finesse. It starts life with two of our newest blogs:

The Money Blog
LSE Latest

It will grow at around two sites a month, starting with a Macro-Economics blog.

Money Finesse will be edited by yours truly, since Alan Greenspan has retired, and I will also write the first two entrants.

Our other Sub-Network, Creme de la Femme, will be launched next month under the guidance of Adelle Tilton.

Syntagma Media will be launching a financial sub-network shortly. Provisionally named: Enrichment Daily, it will cover many aspects of personal finance and macro-economics. We currently have one of each in the network:

London Stock Exchange Latest
The Money Blog

These will be the first two sites in the new mini-network.

If Enrichment Daily sounds a bit mercenary, we may just change it. This will be no spammy operation, but will fall within our Syntagma definition: “High-end, mature (not adult), non-divisive content”.

[Joke]: I live near an old monastery called Buckfast Abbey. Now there’s a name to conjure with: Buckfast for Fast Bucks. Only kidding.

Owing to the continuing avalanche of comment spam across the network, I’ve had to restrict comments on all of the blogs, some more than others.

The general policy will be that all commenters will have to have the first comment moderated. Of course, that won’t stop hand-rolled stuff getting through, but it should restrict the spam that comes totally from machines.

If even this gets too onerous, I may just shut comments down altogether.

Some say blogging is about conversation. That’s true. But you can’t talk to a machine.

We do have an email address prominently displayed. That’s far preferable to spending 1.5 hours a day picking through literally hundreds of comments linking back to dozens of seedy websites.

Blogging lite is better than blogging in a swamp.

What a relief it was this morning to switch on the computer knowing I didn’t have to blog about Microsoft and its product lines. Since Colbert Low has taken over the MS blogs, I’m a free man.

Just keeping up with the shenanigans at Redmond is almost a full-time job. Reading Microsoft Presspass, Mini, IEblog, Ed Bott, scouring Tech.Memorandum, wading through Scoble and his gracious commenters, sampling various Google Alerts and just staying on top of things from a distance of 5000 miles, would tax the patience of a saint.

And what of Windows Vista? Well, it should be named Horizon because however fast you move towards it, it never gets any nearer.

I’ll probably still dip into Scoble’s river of enthusiasm — just to keep my hand in — and retain Memeorandum in the feed reader, but that’s it.

No more Mr Microsoftie. Period.