At last a major player is joining me in my spluttering campaign against social networking spam. The campaign so far has consisted of not joining any of them, so is not quite up to Emily Pankhurst’s Suffragette movement yet.

The plain fact is, there are not enough years in the day to play around with this stuff — unless, of course, you are paid to review it, in which case I forgive you.

If your job involves something else, though, this is just another dose of poison to limit what you are able to achieve in your real work.

The Low Information Diet is the only way to get things done. #

Wake up, or perish by information overload — a death far worse than slow Chinese torture or garotting with piano wire.

As part of our ongoing upgrade and improvement of the network, we now have a new feature in the sidebar :

The 38 sites in the network are listed by topic instead of by name, and sorted into broad niche groups. The aim is to create a menu rather than a list, and to make it easier for visitors to find what they want.

It still needs a bit of tweaking, especially on the loading side. We will be rolling this out across all the other sites in time.

The three experimental portals are now positioned below the contents menu, and will be subject to further changes and extensions over the summer.

Feedback would be welcomed — as always.

Only this morning someone asked me where we got our name Syntagma from. It happens quite a lot.

The original Syntagma Towers in Athens

The boring answer is that I found it through Linguistic Philosophy — do not switch off! It means creating a “whole” from many parts, as words make up a sentence. A bit like a blog network, in fact.

There is a much more famous meaning, though. Syntagma is the name of the Greek Constitution, and also the Square where the Parliament (pictured) is located. I really didn’t know about all that when I named this ship and all who sail in her : Syntagma.

The guidebooks say :

Syntagma (constitution in Greek) is the square in front of the Parliament (formerly the King’s Palace, built between 1836 and 1840 by King Otto and financed by his father Ludwig I of Bavaria) and it is considered the main square of Athens.

Interestingly, our Syntagma is number one on Google for the word “syntagma”, just above the Greek Constitution and Square.

How’s that for fame?

Almost everyone I know is on holiday right now. Mostly they’ve gone to sweltering latitudes to escape the constant rain and floods here in England.

A typical English summer scene — this year at least

Contrariwise — as usual — I’m staying at home this year, although living on the English Riviera is a good incentive not to leave.

Actually, we are planning a major location move in October to a new Syntagma Towers. So, instead of leaving everything to the last minute, I’m going to spread it out over the next two months to lessen the load.

All this is just to say, normal service will continue here at Syntagma over the holiday period. Wherever you’re going, have a great time — and stay in touch.

Mind how you go.