It’s been wet and windy for days here so my customary morning walk has been disrupted for a week. Today though, I braved the elements as a startling piece of intelligence assailed my ears.

You may remember that I rather fancied Rougement Castle as our new HQ – a bit fanciful even though it was up for sale. Then it sold to a property company. End of story? Well, not quite.

First off, I spotted this banner draped over the splendid admin buildings in the courtyard of the ancient pile — now renamed Exeter Castle.

Rougemont becomes the “Covent Garden of the West” with “Exceptional Retail and Entertainment Opportunities”. William the Conqueror must be twirling in his tomb, not to mention the Roman Proconsul who built the original walls nearly 2000 years ago.

But my real reason for going there this morning was because of the Lodge, neatly situated just within the main gates.

Now that is a very nice building indeed. Lots of space and wonderful views of the castle ghosts walking the ramparts at night. And guess what?

It’s for sale or to let. I’m going to inquire after the particulars to see if it’s suitable for us. The only thing that might put me off is all that entertainment billed for the place. It might be a tad noisy at night.

I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Jason Calacanis has just launched Mahalo, a search engine with real humans making some of the decisions. Crazy? Nothing wrong with humans. A bit slow, but generally much more intuitive and accurate than machines. It’s still in alpha so we must wait awhile before testing it properly.

Like most people I suppose, I searched for my name, “John Evans”, and it wasn’t there. But Mahalo did offer to email me when it was. Now that’s what I call service. You search for a name and then you wait for an email. They are though only five months into a five-year project. Nice touch.

I also searched for Syntagma, and bingo, we came 2nd and third on the list, below Syntagma Square, Athens, but above all the other companies now calling themselves Syntagma. Result!

So what’s the idea behind the human operators? This is from the press release :

Are humans better than machines at creating search results?

Yes and no. Humans cannot possibly create as many search results as machines, nor can they go as deep on each search result. However, humans using machines can create much better search results than machines alone. Our “Guides” use Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Flickr, Delicious, and dozens of other services to hand-craft the cleanest, most organized, and spam-free SeRPs available today.

How much time do you spend building a SeRP? It takes a couple of hours to create a solid search result. However, these results need to be maintained by our Guides on an ongoing basis.

This is an interesting concept and it will be good to watch it mature. I’ll be waiting for that email too. The release doesn’t specify whether the Guides will be responsible for taking the search on from my query, but I guess that’s the way the system works.

So long as I come top, I’ll be content.

Try Mahalo yourself.

It must be a quiet day for news when people start showing you pictures of their desks. It could be a lot worse, of course, so we shouldn’t complain. Duncan Riley did it yesterday, and I’ve seen any number around the blogosphere.

My excuse is that it’s been raining here for days so I can’t fulfil last week’s promise of pics taken along the Devon coast. I also get a bit twitchy when I can’t photograph anything. I know that sounds like an addiction but I call it Window-On-The-World Syndrome.

So, yes, here’s a snap of my desk in the Syntagma Towers’ office :

The box on the left is a Windows Vista machine, which I use nearly all the time now. On the right, is the old XP box. There’s still a lot of stuff left on it which I can’t move over : programs incompatible with Vista and mountains of Word and Excel documents.

Incidentally, I’ve discovered a good way of transferring material between computers without fitting a cable between them or burning a disk. Just put it in a Gmail attachment — you’re allowed up to 20MB now — and email it to yourself. Switch on the other computer, and there it is waiting for you. But I expect you knew that.

The boiling question of the day is, what does your desk say about you? Is it cluttered or uncluttered? And if you think that’s a silly inquiry, one business guru wrote an entire book about cluttered desks. I suppose it was a gap in the market.

In case you missed the first pic, here’s a wider shot showing a bit of context. Not much, but you can’t have everything :

But I’ve entertained you long enough …

The Syntagma Story (continued)

Straws in the wind are important signals for digital farmers. They tell them crucially which way the wind is blowing, its strength, and something about the season/cycle.

There are now a lot of straws in the wind for digital networks (or, for purists, blog networks). BlogNetworkWatch no longer covers blog networks. It’s become a sort of mini Blog Herald. Many networks have shut up shop or are quietly getting on with their business underneath the radar.

So what is the state of the digital network business in these apparently doldrum conditions? As I’ve been writing here for a time, waiting for a knock on the door from the Business Development Officer of Yahoo/AOL/Google, whatever, is a sterile career move, and always was.

When Jason Calacanis announced Weblogs Inc was doing $1m a year on Adsense, followed quickly by its sale to AOL for $25m and a seat on the board, networks of content providers became the new Klondike. Lots of people moved in, including Weblog Empire (Duncan Riley) and b5media (Jeremy Wright and other names from the starry firmament). I worked for both before moving quickly on to form Syntagma Media.

Even then there were two ways you could play a digital network :

1. Build infrastucture and content platforms quickly so it stands out against the competition. Go for size and scale before anything else. Then, with a bit of luck, the BDO will come knocking on your humble door. Bingo! Blogging bliss.

2. Optimize the network for income — remember WIN was making $1m a year from Adsense alone before it sold out.

Here at Syntagma we followed Route 1, aiming always to reinvest income in exchange for size (55 sites and rising), and pushing the envelope into new fields, like network magazines and large retail portals. The business plan also included a move into IP-TV in 2008.

However, a major rethink has been forced on us through a number of events. Not the least is a lucrative publishing offer landing on my lap and, yes, straws in the wind. There are no big buyers of digital networks out there now, and even those that are sold have to settle for a bit upfront followed by a share in the income thereafter — in effect turning the owner into a salaryman of the buyer.

The really interesting point though, is that once you go from Route 1 and start exploring Route 2, something highly beneficial emerges. When you stop pouring all of your treasure into endless expansion, you discover that you can start paying yourself a handsome income just by running the network as a normal business, capping the size and scale, and going for quality and depth, rather than extension and constant revolution.

A network like Syntagma can easily pay its owner a six-figure salary (and rising) from a steady-as-she-goes policy of improvement and quality delivery. That assumes the business is around two-years old (we’re two in October) and has a bunch of mature inventory.

In the end, what you get out of a project is more important than prestige, size, or future bonanzas, real or imagined — try explaining it to your bank manager.

So that’s the subtle shift I’ve made in the running of Syntagma. From a network that, at its peak, employed 15 authors, with five vacancies outstanding, to a trim 30 to 40 sites with maybe six high-quality freelances working. We are now a medium-sized digital publisher aiming for depth and quality. One that pays its owner a decent salary, allowing him to spend time on the book deals.

I’m guessing that many network owners have already come to the same conclusion. It’s not astro science after all. If Route 1 seems like a distant dream, even a total mirage, then Route 2 holds some surprises in store. It’s the old bootstrapper’s adage that, the lower your costs, the less you have to turnover to get into the comfort zone. Syntagma is now officially a Route 2 business. Our motto is :

Mind you, if any BDOs are in the area, do drop into Syntagma Towers for a cup of tea. (The champagne has already been auctioned off).