It’s an incredibly busy time for us here at Syntagma right now. What with new equipment to break in, upgraded systems for accounts, stats and other functions to test, we’ve also got the builders in. Today and tomorrow the floorboards are up in the office, so it’s difficult to get near the desktop computers.

Just the time for a big story to break on one of our main sites. Yesterday we had around 30,000 visitors to our Royal Anecdotes site off the back of the Kate Middleton story. Some newspapers have been shamelessly nicking our angles and distinctive points of view on this story. Anyone would think I’d used their stuff in the past. Ahem …

I sometimes wonder how I ever get time to post. Admin is such a huge drain on human resources in a multi-person content business. If it’s not lawyers, accountants, writers or partners eating valuable time, it’s the builders.

However, we should be back to normal by the weekend when we’ll be able to draw breath for the first time in a month.

Mind how you go.

With news that Microsoft will no longer ship Windows XP by the end of the year, the pressure is on to get Windows Vista on an even keel.

Yesterday we replaced all our XP-based computers with brand new Vista ones. So, how’s the “experience” going?

Like all software projects it’s a bit of a curate’s egg. The good bits are very, very good, the bad bits, horrible.

First off, it’s over-engineered, as I knew it would be after writing about it for two years. I’ve long made my peace with XP, even its dodgy bits, like USB handling — there seem to be two conflicting systems at work as soon as you add new hardware through USB ports. On XP, I’ve arranged for all files and folders to be available from the desktop through shortcuts and know where to find anything I want.

In Vista they’ve tried to make it fashionably intuitive, so nothing can be found — unless, of course, you have an abundance of intuition (guesswork), and even then I doubt it’s that easy. Jim Allchin was dead right back in 2004 to scrap the Vista project as it stood, put aside the new file handling system, and rewrite the basic code around a kernel, a bit like Linux.

However, to my mind, it’s still too darned clever by half. It’s the product of geeks coding for geeks, but trying to make it easy for the hoi-polloi, like me.

I should point out that I’ve only been at it for around three hours, and we’re currently running the XP systems alongside the Vista boxes.

Worryingly, BT broadband has no new software discs for Vista, which is odd, especially as it took me six hours to get XP working on their new 8Mbs service. By the time I’d cleared off all the childish Yahoo material they showered onto our office computers — fuming with murderous intent — I’d damaged the registers and had to start again.

Unbelievably, I now have to do the same all over for Vista, even using the old disc. Why don’t these prize boobies realize that usability is more important than features?

I also had to turn off the main protection feature of Windows Vista, the User Account system, in order to get the broadband disc even to begin. The disc couldn’t see any admin powers with which to set the thing up. This, of course, is deliberately intended to stop enemy attacks — preventing intruders from scooping up admin powers. Trouble is, it also stops you doing the things that computers are meant to do, like making changes, improving settings etc. Each time I attempt to do anything beyond clicking on programs, the defence system asks me to override the defence. Crazy, or what? By turning off User Account protection, I can now do anything I want, but have dumped Vista’s main line of defence.

I expect I’ll turn it on again once I’ve wrestled the BT software into submission, opened up the computer to an avalanche of malicious grungeware, and become a nervous wreck. Come to think of it, I may have succeeded in that already.

Now some plus points : the computer manufacturer (MESH) has added some extra USB ports on the front of the box, and they work brilliantly. Both my flash memory pod and my digicam card reader worked so smoothly they might have been soaked in baby oil.

I might just get used to this — when I’ve gone through the learning curve, got online and remembered all my passwords for the Web-as-computer stuff.

Update : My query to British Telecom (BT) about the old broadband disc has resulted in a phone call informing me that there is no disc currently available for setting up their broadband service for Windows Vista computers. Inexplicable.

The call came from a foreign call centre and was delivered in an impenetrable accent so that the woman caller had to spell out each word out using a system of pronunciation completely unknown to me. By using a great deal of imagination I finally got the gist of my username and new password. I am soon to receive an email explaining how to get the software for Vista connection to BT’s broadband service — some sort of hasty workaround, I think. It just gets better and better.

Update : I take it all back. While I was waiting for the clunky BT software to take effect, Vista had done it all for me. I was online all the time without knowing it. Ah well, I was never cut out to be a geek.

I’m now enjoying the Vista experience enormously. OFFICIAL.

News hot off the presses of three new series starting on Syntagma inventory :

1. If you’re an aficionado of the BBC’s top-notch, mega-hit TV series, Life on Mars, you’ll be interested to know that Syntagma author, Guy Adams wrote the BBC book of the show, and is just beginning on the second volume, which covers the second series.

Read Guy’s story over on The Hack’s Progress.

2. As it’s Edward Elgar’s 150th anniversary in June, Steve Newman is publishing his play : A Summer Garden, over on Classy Classical in eight parts.

Start reading here.

3. The fourth in our Zen Masters series has begun over at Spiritual Nirvana. Catch the biography of Hui Neng, the sixth Chinese Patriarch of Zen, here.

My print publishing business, Dial Publishing, is currently in exploratory talks to buy a small, but established print publisher of nonfiction books. This is still at the confidential, due diligence stage, so no names or pack drill.

If the buy comes off it will bring a solid backlist of steady sellers to Dial’s inventory, plus a fund of experience and connections impossible to create overnight. Dial Publishing is a totally separate business from Syntagma Digital Limited, which is our digital publishing company.

These events have ballooned out over the Easter period and have led me to reflect on the essential differences between print and digital publishing. With 20 years of print experience and two years of digital publishing behind me, I’m only now beginning to see the wood from the trees.

Let’s state from the outset that we’re talking profitable projects here, not worthwhile artistic efforts which gain critical acclaim but lose money — they are more in the province of personal blogs. In the commercial sphere, it’s the money that determines the outcome in both cases, as always.

Digital and print publishing are surprisingly complementary over a range of possible output. Speaking very generally, the money in digital publishing is in :

Bite-sized reports on events and products that command large-scale interest.

Most essay-type sites don’t make any money at all. The way still to earn income publishing online (not social networking) remains in a few mega-niches : finance, automotive, gadgets, gossip and miscellaneous products and services. Looking across Syntagma’s 50-60 sites the ones with large numbers of text link ads stand out a mile. That’s a very good test of financial viability. All our projects going forward focus on these areas.

The gold in nonfiction print publishing comes from :

Lengthy exposition and detailed information on essential topics and useful techniques.

Most writers find one of these branches easier to accomplish than the other. Just a few may be good at both.

So, in terms of cash and results, there are two discrete environments — print and digital publishing — to work with. Both are capable of bringing results, but the need to consolidate and move on is ever present, especially online.

Other Considerations
To succeed in digital publishing you need to play the market and its highly volatile readership with a certain degree of cunning. Traffic is driven by keywords and buzz — what we used to call “word of mouth”, but now in a different context. To win online you have to get down and dirty with search engine optimization and a measure of gaming of the system. Google benefits too, so there’s real scope for the dark arts here.

Some people don’t really like that aspect of digital publishing — I confess to being a bit chary of it myself. However, to win a war you have to kill people. There’s no other way.

Print publishing is much more congenial to anyone with scruples, although the scope for shenanigans is increasing by the day, especially as the number of titles being published grows beyond the public’s capacity — and wish — to purchase. Content and reputation count above all in today’s busy marketplace.

Complementarity
If you indulge in both arms of publishing, what are the cross-fertilizations you can call up to improve both businesses?

There are many, but in brief :

* You can sell books online and use websites for publicity.
* Books can contain a list of web addresses to get a new audience logging on.
* Multiple cross-references can drive traffic both ways.
* Websites can provide an introduction, while a book develops the whole picture.
* Books can refer readers to websites for more up-to-date information.

These are real benefits and, used smartly, can make a great deal of difference to success on- and offline.

The convergence of digital and print publishing is therefore more of a complementarity than a merging. That the same people are now often doing both is a sign that a mature marketplace is developing which successfully crosses the seemingly large ravine between the two outlets for publishing.

Which, though, potentially yields the bigger return on investment?

That will have to be left to another post, so stay close.

Syntagma wishes our regulars and all who chance by here, a very happy Easter break.

We’re off for a few days now for a little rest and recuperation before picking up the baton again on Tuesday.

See you then.

All Syntagma Digital sites, and those of Dial Publishing, will be moving to new enterprise-level servers over coming weeks.

This should help us provide an even better service for our advertisers and customers while allowing us to develp more sophisticated features on the network.

It’s a big operation, so there may be some minor disruptions along the way. We are assured these will be kept to a minimum.

To all of you who have emailed inquiring about my absence from the Syntagma battlements in recent weeks, thank you.

I’ve been completing the last of my contract obligations for a media company with strong ties to the retail sector. Now that it’s complete, I can concentrate totally on Syntagma’s weighty world affairs. Exhaustion, however, may slow me down in the first few days. Bear with me if I don’t get round to you immediately.

We do, though, have a fast-track channel for anyone wishing to pay us.

Apart from the routine operations always present in a large network, we have a huge slew of new projects and maturing older ones to tackle after Easter. Here’s a taster :

* Moneyizor network magazine to be designed and launched, including three new webtitles to be set up.

* Final proofread of Syntagma Media’s first print book of the new season : Naked Tales — Stories By Writers Who Blog, which is being published by Humdrumming in May.

* Complete switch over to new Windows Vista systems for all activities. We’re also making the move to Microsoft Office 2007 in one fell swoop. I’m really looking forward to all the glitches.

* Work on Dial Publishing’s new edgewise general trade imprint. The first print title will be Steve Newman’s brilliant fictionalized biography of Ernest Hemingway, currently being serialized here by Syntagma Digital.

* Initial work on our Retailz USA retail portal, due in May/June.

* Something called “real life”. What can that be?

One morning I’ll wake up with absolutely nothing to do all day. Then I’ll know I’m dead.

In the meantime, raise the bugle and signal the advance.