Measure Map

It turns out that I suck at juggling a busy life and writing for this site. There's no shortage of material--I have a backlog of half-written posts and notes on napkins longer than my arm--but at the end of the day there's no energy left to polish and publish. My expectations for posting frequency are being adjusted by a healthy slap of reality.

If there was one moment recently that gave me energy to write again, it was last weekend. A handful of us pulled chairs into a small circle in a hotel lobby, drinking beer late in to the night while listening to Jeff Veen of Adaptive Path hold court. Jeff and my paths cross once every year, yet I never fail to glean new inspiration and understanding from him each time.

Last week's topic du jour was the soon-to-be-released Measure Map. As a food blogger, let me state unequivocally that this service represents a big step forward in how we comprehend the relationships of a blog to the Rest of the World. Where most (all?) other stats programs focus on things like site "pageviews" and browser market share, Measure Map attempts to lend insight into the particular microcosm of blogging. It looks at relationships between visitors, links, comments and posts then helps identify trends and anomalies.

Do you write a blog and sometimes wonder if you're spewing words into a relative vacuum? Measure Map helps identify exactly how people are interacting with your writing. Even if your blog is enormously popular, would you like to know which topics create an unusual buzz? Measure Map is a perfect fit. It closes the feedback loop in ways that no one previously has been able to. That excites me. Not only that, but the interface is slick, using tons of careful planning and Ajax to anticipate common tasks and make them natural.

I've already submitted a request to be part of the early rollout, but I guess my annual handshaking with Jeff doesn't give me enough juice to join quite yet. I'm trying hard to be patient, but this is cool.