With the tenth anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car accident coming up on Friday, Syntagma readers may be interested in an objective look at her character and story in our Royal Anecdotes site.

Even ten years after, the shock of that August night still reverberates around the world and has the power to disrupt her belated Memorial Service at the Guards Chapel in London.

What is the truth about Diana? Was she the secular saint portrayed by her supporters, or the “devious moron” proclaimed last week by the feminist writer and academic, Germaine Greer?

Whenever a person polarizes opinion in the way Diana did and still does, we must suspect a multi-faceted personality at work. How else is it possible that one observer can be repelled, like Greer, while another becomes a devotee for life?

Read the whole article.

The internet is dead and boring according to Mark Cuban, internet A-lister, venture capitalist and TV impresario. He believes it has become a “utility” and therefore a bit like electricity or water — yawn-inducing!

As always this kind of argument concentrates on the medium not the message. For example, ten years ago childrens’ books were dead in the water — today’s kids are “visual”, brought up on screen games and videos. They couldn’t get into textual stuff at all.

Then the Harry Potter books arrived on the scene. Not only did they revolutionize the sales of children’s books, they also hugely boosted another old medium, the movies.

We’re always saying here in Syntagma that the medium is boring — it should be. All mediums should be unobtrusive, allowing creativity to flourish. The message is the thing. Find exciting new content and even the most ancient technologies, like books, magazines, television and film, come to life in a splurge of fresh excitement and initiative.

The internet is a platform. At present, there’s nothing to match it as a pipe for instant content. Most content is rubbish, of course, but the opportunities are there for anyone who can grab the public’s attention or imagination.

The medium is not the message. The message allows the medium to thrive. Quality content makes the internet valuable. Find that, and you’re in business.

We’re all back from our summer hols, raring to get stuck into the autumn season — mists and mellow fruitfulness, and all that. I like to be back a week or so before America’s Labor Day, which always signals the start of the run-up to Christmas for those of us in the content and advertising business.

We won’t be fully up to speed until Monday as we have some new equipment to set up and yet more preparations for our move in October.

Autumn/fall should be good this year as, apart from the new offices, we have a raft of new projects and sideways expansions to get to grips with. More on those later.

The forecasters are telling us that after the wettest summer on record, we’re now set for an Indian Summer in September and October. England never loses its power to surprise.

Whatever the weather, it’s business as usual.

We’re in the process of moving our syntagmamedia.com domain to a different registrar. This may result in loss of service for an hour or two today.

We’ll be back as quickly as it takes. Stay zeroed in!