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Torque

Automattic

Updates to the Jetpack Plugin

Filed Under

Featured

Published

February 4, 2014

2 Comments

Late last week, the Automattic team released the newest version of Jetpack, which included a few notable updates worth taking a look at which should make some people’s lives easier. Full disclosure: I use Jetpack, but not all the time. For content-driven sites I find it useful, but with larger sites I’ll usually leave it off. That’s just where I stand. Markdown Support I remember when John O’Nolan first pitched Ghost to the WordPress community, one of his major sticking points was a cluttered post editor with lack of Markdown support. With the newest version of Jetpack, Markdown is now […]

If You Wouldn’t Say It in Person, Would You Say It Online?

Filed Under

Community, Featured

Published

January 27, 2014

16 Comments

This question is at the center of the recent security breach involving Disqus, a widely used comment hosting service, and Gravatar, a service owned by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s company Automattic. Gravatar allows users to maintain a consistent profile picture across websites enabling a Gravatar plugin. Until recently, Disqus enabled Gravatar which uses an MD5 hash, an algorithm designed in 1991, to mask the email addresses associated with each Gravatar account. Gravatar’s MD5 hash has been proven to be easily hackable. In December, a group of investigative journalists at Sweden’s Researchgruppen was able to de-anonymize the identities of thousands of […]

Matt Mullenweg Turns 30… And Becomes CEO of Automattic

Filed Under

Community

Published

January 14, 2014

1 Comment

Yesterday, on the heels of his 30th birthday, WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg announced that he would be taking over as CEO of Automattic, the company he founded just over eight years ago, marking a transition from his focus on tech and product to business. He will be swapping roles with Toni Schneider, who announced in a blog post yesterday that he felt a “sense of completion” in regard to Automattic’s early goals and that he was ready to “work on some new product ideas.” Schneider will fill the role of advisor that Mullenweg has held. “Internally this isn’t a big […]

Cloudup Acquired by Automattic

Filed Under

News

Published

September 25, 2013

2 Comments

Automattic has acquired Cloudup, a file-sharing service whose mission includes the desire to make media sharing “simple and beautiful.” This acquisition means two exciting changes for WordPress users: 1) The not-so-ideal Media Library is going to be vastly improved, and 2) Multiple people will be able to work within a post at the same time. From an editor’s perspective, these are two major changes that should make the publishing experience on WordPress that much more pleasant and efficient. I can’t wait! With Cloudup’s technology soon enabling multiple parties to edit at the same time, WordPress publishing can be taken to the […]

The Year Without Pants: Reviewed

Filed Under

Community

Published

September 17, 2013

4 Comments

I discovered this eye-catching book amidst my mail, and of course it sparked instant curiosity. A bright red book with a suggestive cover…who wouldn’t push their boring bills aside to further investigate? First Impressions I have to admit, American Apparel is what immediately came to mind. An urban art school grad, I’m among American Apparel’s prime demographic, so the fact that I instantly thought of the overpriced hipster brand speaks more to the brand’s aggressive (though clearly effective) marketing than to the design of the book cover. But many WordPress users are in this same cultural sphere, subjected to the same references, so it’s worth […]

Commercial Plugin Updates Done Right?

Filed Under

Archives

Published

July 3, 2013

4 Comments

It seems like a possibility (and should be). If you’ve been around for a while then you probably have a combination of a number of WordPress.org plugins that have the ability to be updated automatically with the touch of a button (via your notifications inside your dash) and you’ve also got some non-WP.org plugins as well, perhaps even some premium/commercial plugins that need to get updated. The problem, of course, is that there isn’t an easy auto-update capability for the latter scenarios. Gary Pendergast from Automattic has written about some of those exact issues that he’s bumped into via his […]

Evan Solomon Moves On to Join Medium

Filed Under

Archives

Published

July 2, 2013

1 Comment

Evan Solomon, who left Automattic back in January of this year, has found a new watering hole (and work) with Medium, a much-talked about blogging platform by Evan Williams and co. (We showcased an interview via Kevin Rose and Evan Williams yesterday, btw.) He announced it on his blog about his move and we’ve been pinged a number of times already by our community as well: Today was my first day as an employee at Medium. I’ve been doing contract work for about two months, but last Friday I accepted an offer to join full time. I’m excited and I want […]

WP.com Launches Cities, Approved Hosting for Feds

Filed Under

Archives

Published

June 26, 2013

5 Comments

WordPress.com and Automattic continue to push out their vertical marketing and engagement by introducing what they are dubbing “Cities” in an attempt to grab more customers as well as save those same customers tons of cash: City administrators: Don’t spend thousands of dollars on a proprietary system for your city’s website. We’ve launched WordPress.com/cities as the go-to place to start a site for your city or other municipal body, and there’s no charge to get started. (“Free” is a price that will get every taxpayer on board, and since WordPress.com has been approved as a hosting site for federal government agencies, you […]

Automattic Acquires Poster App

Filed Under

Archives

Published

June 16, 2013

2 Comments

In a short announcement it seems that Automattic has acquired Poster App, an iPhone / iPad publishing system that was built by Tom Witkin: I’m elated to share that I, along with Poster, will be joining Automattic. I’ll be working with the mobile team where I’ll be both designing and coding. So what’s changing? Poster will no longer be available for purchase, but if you’ve already bought the app you’ll always be able to re-download it. I’m continuing to support it, and I’m always just an email away if you’ve got any questions. We’ve covered it before and I’ve used it myself – […]

Conflict of Interest? Dreamhost and WPEngine?

Filed Under

Community

Published

June 5, 2013

21 Comments

This was brought to my attention this morning as I was looking more into the details of DreamPress, which is Dreamhost‘s new WordPress-centric hosting solution to give more power to those WP-centric sites and customers. Like I’ve mentioned publicly before, I’ve been a long-time customer of Dreamhost for my smaller sites, since 2007, and I’ve been very happy with what I’ve gotten, especially since my expectations of performance and usage were in check. And at the very same time I’m also a fan of what WP Engine has going on and have some great convos with a number of their […]

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