I’ve always had a strong appreciation for Jeffrey Veen ever since he helped me get my chops in web design with his great articles for HotWired and WebMonkey way back when. He’s always been about not just the nuts and bolts of the web but about improving user experience when using those nuts and bolts. His most recent tenure at Adaptive Path, the company he helped to found, has exemplified that focus on user experience, whether it be in new uses for Ajax or more emphasis on accessibility. Awhile back Jeffrey wrote an amazingly detailed argument on what was wrong with content management systems, which had me shaking my head in absolute agreement, since it was everything I had thought to myself and never openly expressed. When someone as webwise as Jeffrey Veen validates your negative feelings you KNOW the CMS programs must really be missing the mark!

While at Adaptive Path Jeffrey headed the Measure Map development team. Measure Map is a sort of “Google Analytics” for blogs. Well, now Measure Map has been purchased by Google and as part of the package they’re getting Jeffrey Veen and the rest of the Measure Map dev team in the bargain! One has to wonder which side was more astute in this deal. I’m sure Adaptive Path, although flush with cash from the sale, will sorely miss Jeffrey, but I also suspect it won’t be long before amazing things start coming out of the Googleplex. With the Google budget behind him and the amount of information and raw dev talent at his fingertips we’ll be seeing the Veen touch on Google offerings pretty soon. And hopefully Veen will save them from some of their rather large Oopses (can we say AutoLinks?)

It’s hard to know what this marriage will create, but no matter what, it’s sure to be interesting.

Technorati Tags: Jeffrey Veen, Adaptive Path, Measure Map, Google

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.