Syntagma Media is looking for a new author for our PR5 Wordpress blog, Digital Camera Latest. The site already has a good number of posts, reviews, previews etc,. but I want to sharpen up its presentation and posting rate, and make it one of the top digicam information websites.

The blogger should have an excellent knowledge of digital cameras and direct experience of their use. Naturally, an ability to write engagingly about the subject is a must.

Please apply, with sample posts and relevant experience to: John(at)SyntagmaMedia(dot)com.

Update: We have now filled this vacancy. The site will be authored on a shared arrangement from next month.

Many thanks for all the good wishes for our transition from a blog network to a Web Network Magazine. A lot of people have commented, mostly favourably. A few geeks have raised a quizzical eyebrow or two, it’s fair to say.

I’ve been over the process quite a bit, so suffice it to say, Syntagma is looking for a wider audience outside the blogosphere in the territory of mainstream media. That doesn’t mean we’re deserting the predominately tech audience within it. We’re not. We still have three tech blogs and a gadget blog.

Quite a few people have suggested a new “front page” to include RSS headline feeds from the other sites. That’s top of the agenda right now. The tricky part is that RSS feeds are pretty boring. Like pungent spices, they have to be used sparingly.

Some kind of directory on a widened-out page will happen though, but maybe not the “river of news” some people want. Syntagma will still be in a written format, and not a Crewe junction for the network.

That’s all to come in our next fit of creativity — when we’ve recovered from the last one.

A Peter Kay line in Phoenix Nights (UK sitcom) has been voted the greatest one-liner in TV comedy history :

“Garlic bread — it’s the future, I’ve tasted it”.

I’ve often wondered who gets to make these decisions. Some of us have thrown away better one-liners than that. Haven’t they watched any episodes of Friends (especially Chandler), or Frazier? I’m guessing it’s all in the performance for this one.

Here’s my contribution : “Chicken Kiev — the best squirt in the eye I’ve ever had.”

Shan’t give up the day job.

Thanks to Darren over at Blog Republic for the interview published today.

Excerpt :

4) I called your SyntagmaMedia a blog network, but I think you’re changing that direction a bit. Tell me what your direction is, and why?

This reflects what I said above, that blog networks are geeky things that appeal to the Techmeme set. We’re looking way beyond that now and see ourselves more as a continuously-updated, online, distributed magazine, with each “blog” as a topic section with its own domain and standalone capability.

Catch it at : Blog Republic.

As with most writers, the tools of the trade mean a lot to me. Over the years these tools have become so complicated it’s hard to keep track of them. The long journey from charcoal to software has been full of twists and turns and unexpected developments.

Since word processors were invented, pencils have seemed so outre. Even when typewriters first came on the scene, the humble wooden scribbler still had some meaning in life. Now, alas, this most simple of utilitarian inventions is regarded with disdain by most people. Except … some of us.

Ever since hearing that Henry David Thoreau didn’t live off a hill of beans while staying at Walden, I’ve thought of him as a pretty shrewd sort of guy. He was a man who wrote arguably the most successful book in history about surviving in the wilds.

Close inspection of his methods, though, reveals that he situated his “hut” just a mile or so from his home town of Concord, Mass., so that he could drop in on his friends for dinner, and even go home for weekends. Why do I find that so admirable?

Even more resourceful was his insistence on keeping the family pencil factory going while he struggled for sustinence in the woods. Why pencils? Well, he was a writer, and this was the middle of the 19th century, before typewriters came on the scene. In those days pencils were big business, and siting one close to sources of timber and charcoal was a surefire guarantee of success.

I mention all this as a preamble to an interesting blog I stumbled on during my increasing rare rounds of the blogosphere. It’s called The Pencil Revolution, and what it doesn’t know about pencils could be written on the end of a pencil. Thoreau would have loved this one.

Pencil Revolution

Since the Blog Herald switched from being a river of posts to an online broadsheet newspaper, it’s been rather good to Syntagma — at least in terms of column inches. We’ll draw a veil over Aaron Brazell for the moment.

Today, TDH (don’t know who that is) gives some coverage to our reorganization from a blog network to a “continuously updated, online, distributed magazine”.

At first T tries hard to put the boot in but, realizing that would be grotesquely inappropriate, switches its direction just before making contact. T ends by being quite supportive and appreciative of our activities and aims. Naturally, we agree.

In the month of July Syntagma Media’s basket of key indicators showed an increase of 20.8 pc. Annualized that represent a 250 pc growth rate.

July, of course, is traditionally a slow month for commerce, the exceptions being anything related to travel, tourism and vacations in general. So our true growth is probably somewhere between 300 and 400 pc — a rate that outperforms even Hong Kong in its heyday.

As we often say, blog networks — whether interpreted as geeky outlets for techy types, or online, distributed magazines, like Syntagma — are a good business to be in.

If you wish to take advantage of our red hot inventory, just click on the AdsViral link in the sidebar.

Over the hottest part of the summer we’ve been toiling away to effect a complete transformation of Syntagma, from a typical “blog network” to a “continuously updated, online distributed magazine”.

The “distributed” part refers to the “wide” network model we’ve used from the beginning : each topic section being a website with its own individual domain name. We also use the Wordpress weblog technology, but that’s more for convenience than the wish to be bloggers.

The general public sees bloggers as lone voices crying out in the wilderness, usually making a lot of noise in order to be heard. By contrast, when you’re a writer of a distinct topic section of an online magazine, you’re not really a blogger at all, but a …… Well, we’re calling them authors.

The second stage of the reorg was to get rid of the “supplements”, which suggested they were somehow different to the main output instead of just being different “flavours” in the mix. The new “clusters” will add coherence and order to the magazine and enhance reader migration between similar subject areas.

So we now have MetaSyntagma, which collects our mystical sites together. Currently we have Supernatural and Spiritual Nirvana. In September we’ll be launching Arunachala News, a new website providing on-the-spot coverage of life on India’s most mystical mountain : Arunachala. If you’ve heard of Ramana Maharshi I won’t need to say more.

With the return of Money Finesse to the fold, our Money Supplement becomes MoneySyntagma. Creme de la Femme has been dropped because it lacked the leverage we thought it would develop. The success of our art site, Art NYC, however, may encourage us to look at a specific arts cluster : ArtSyntagma at some stage.

Because of the change of emphasis towards a more unified structure, the new clusters won’t need separate editors, as before. We will rely on our authors to provide the editorial input — which many of them do already.

Our newest cluster is iSyntagma, the “i” standing for Indulgences. Here I’ve plonked my personal book blogs, and Naked Tales, a group project which, incidentally, doesn’t have a naked tail in sight, contrary to popular conception. Also our long-term publishing project, Dial Publishing, and my soon-to-be-up Superdemocracy Manifesto, which is more business oriented than political.

The advantage of iSyntagma is that there’s now a place to put suggestions we get for sites dealing with personal agendas, where commercialization would be inappropriate and unwelcome. Believe me, most ideas pitched to me fall into this category, whether the “blogger” knows it or not. The really great ones — mostly by invitation only — will go in there.

So that’s the new structure of UberSyntagma rolling out into the autumn/fall. How far we’ve come from the first stirrings of an idea for a “blog network” which we are now transforming into something acceptable to a wider readership. The objective is to develop a more mainstream platform as we go up a notch or two in the publishing food chain.

Although we’re not launching any new websites until after Labor Day in the States, we are in the process of resurrecting two older ones.

Money Finesse went belly up because of problems with the author. It was a very promising blog but never really got off the ground. Now, one of our Boston-based bloggers, Andrea Paulsen, who is in insurance, has taken it on and is doing a splendid job of coaxing the phoenix from the ashes.

Americana Dream flopped because it was poorly conceived as a travelogue, which meant the blogger was often writing about places she had never seen. A fine recipe for disaster. Now, that excellent writer and other half of the Boston blogging team, Clive Allen, has taken it up with his usual philosophical grace and good humour humor. It goes live today.

The very best of Americana Dreaming to both of them.