The panic in the blogosphere is palpable. Some rotter hacked into Wordpress 2.1.1 before the code was released, potentially allowing Al Quaeda a backdoor into our homes. Well, that’s how it sounds.

We are being urged by all manner of worthies to upgrade IMMEDIATELY to WP 2.1.2.

Now that’s all very well, but I guess the majority of users will be on hosted servers and rely on Fantastico (or its equivalent) to present upgrade options. I just checked on one of our hosted servers and the upgrade option is — you guessed it — 2.1.1, and has been for days. It’s still there as I type at 11.30 GMT Sunday morning, March 4.

Shouldn’t someone at Wordpress ping the Fantasticos and tell them, “Houston, we have a problem”? Come on Matt. I can hear Osama sharpening his sword.

This is to announce our new consultancy business, Dial Consultants, which covers digital publishing, online content creation and management.

The business is separate from Syntagma Digital and is part of Dial Publishing, our print publishing house.

On offer : 20 years experience in magazine, general, and educational publishing — see here, here and here – and, in particular, one and a half years building Syntagma Digital from scratch into a 50 website content creator, divided into four network magazines. Add on a career as a full-time author and journalist and that’s the swagbag now dangling at the door of Syntagma Towers.

To contact Dial Consultants, email : John(at)dialpublishing(dot)com. It’s as simple as that.

We are now actively working on the next planned development of our network magazine concept. This involves opening them up to suitable sites/blogs outside the Syntagma Digital inventory.

The move will allow external sites inclusion in our rolling feeds, plus graphical representation on the portals and participation in the Editor’s Pick of the Posts. In addition, they will become recipients of any magazine-wide advertising deals we negotiate going forward. Involvement will not change the ownership, hosting arrangements, or running of outside sites in any way.

We are currently looking at the technical and monetary aspects of this proposal and will reach some decisions over the coming month. Inclusion will be open to all four of our network magazines :

Allusionz – Arts and Philosophies
LifeTimes – Lifestyles and Celebrities
21st-century Phi – Sciences and Future Technologies
(Coming Soon) Moneyizor — Money Matters and Small Business.

In the meantime, site/blog owners who may be interested in this proposition can email me to register an interest and be involved in the early stages of the arrangement. The email address is in the footer.

Update : In an interview with 901am, the conversation continued :

How will you split the revenue with participating sites?
We’re currently looking at a 70/30 split in favor of the client for all new magazine-wide advertising. That beats what’s on offer elsewhere, at least to my knowledge. It also has added advantages in terms of traffic.

What’s your goal with adding more sites to the various network magazines? Are there any milestones you want to reach, and where will it lead eventually?
The goal is to use the increased page views from the extra sites to secure better advertising for everyone aggregated in the magazine, including our own authors. It makes sense to maximize the use of the content platforms we’re creating in a way that benefits everyone involved. As for milestones, the system is totally expansible with no limits that I can see.

External sites and blogs will get exposure on our content platforms, traffic back, and 70% of new advertising revenue generated on contributing sites. Owners pay nothing, and virtually do nothing for all that. It’s got to be one of the best deals around.

Since downloading IE7 (Internet Explorer) I’ve become a huge fan of its Cleartype feature. This is a technology Microsoft has been working on for years that eliminates the ragged edges of text displayed in the browser. I have an idea the technical term is anti-aliasing.

I’m totally addicted to Cleartype now because it converts scratchy browser text to the quality expected from expensive desktop software, like Microsoft Office 2007.

The main problem though comes when I switch to Firefox. It’s like falling back through time and emerging in the 1990s.

After asking and Googling around, I’ve discovered that you can turn Cleartype on globally in Windows XP — and presumably Vista too.

The route to text heaven is : Start -> Control Panel -> Display -> Appearance -> Effects… -> “Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts”. Select Clear Type from the dropdown menu, apply and OK your way out.

Believe me, it’s worth it, and, what’s more, you’ll view our extensive inventory under the best possible conditions.