Cloud up Joins the Automattic Family

Cloud up Joins the Automattic Family

Uploading media and sharing content are at the core of the WordPress publishing experience, and that experience is something we obsess about.
Today we’re delighted to announce we’re acquiring Cloudup, a company that’s as fanatical about these core experiences as we are. Cloudup‘s built some fantastic technology that we can’t wait for you to try out.

What is Cloudup?

At the heart of Cloudup is a ridiculously fast sharing platform that allows you to drag and drop images easily, share to social media, auto-upload screenshots, and instantly share videos with friends before the video is even fully uploaded — syncing effortlessly all the while and working perfectly across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.

Share images and video seamlessly.

Works perfectly and syncs effortlessly regardless of your device.

Cloudup’s core services capture many things we’ve long wanted to do around improving the WordPress Media Library and we’re super excited to make these improvements a reality.

Collaborative editing

Another exciting feature our new friends from Cloudup will help build is a real-time collaborative editing experience. What Google Docs has done with documents, we believe we can do with blog posts. We have some big ideas on what we can do in this space, and we’ll be incorporating these efforts into the WordPress.com visual editor in the coming months.

What’s next?

So as you can imagine, we have a lot of work ahead of us in bringing these services to you — and not just for WordPress.com users, but also for all of you running self-hosted WordPress with Jetpack.
As we work behind the scenes, Cloudup remains in private beta. But, if you want to get a preview of what’s ahead, we’re opening up another 5,000 spots. So please head over and signup. Once you have your account, you can embed Cloudup images in your blog’s post editor by just pasting in the URL on a line by itself.
A big congrats to the Cloudup team, and welcome to the Automattic family.
Uploading media and sharing content are at the core of the WordPress publishing experience, and that experience is something we obsess about.
Today we’re delighted to announce we’re acquiring Cloudup, a company that’s as fanatical about these core experiences as we are. Cloudup‘s built some fantastic technology that we can’t wait for you to try out.

What is Cloudup?

At the heart of Cloudup is a ridiculously fast sharing platform that allows you to drag and drop images easily, share to social media, auto-upload screenshots, and instantly share videos with friends before the video is even fully uploaded — syncing effortlessly all the while and working perfectly across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.

Share images and video seamlessly.

Works perfectly and syncs effortlessly regardless of your device.

Cloudup’s core services capture many things we’ve long wanted to do around improving the WordPress Media Library and we’re super excited to make these improvements a reality.

Collaborative editing

Another exciting feature our new friends from Cloudup will help build is a real-time collaborative editing experience. What Google Docs has done with documents, we believe we can do with blog posts. We have some big ideas on what we can do in this space, and we’ll be incorporating these efforts into the WordPress.com visual editor in the coming months.

What’s next?

So as you can imagine, we have a lot of work ahead of us in bringing these services to you — and not just for WordPress.com users, but also for all of you running self-hosted WordPress with Jetpack.
As we work behind the scenes, Cloudup remains in private beta. But, if you want to get a preview of what’s ahead, we’re opening up another 5,000 spots. So please head over and signup. Once you have your account, you can embed Cloudup images in your blog’s post editor by just pasting in the URL on a line by itself.
A big congrats to the Cloudup team, and welcome to the Automattic family.

The Year Without Pants: An interview with author Scott Berkun

The Year Without Pants: An interview with author Scott Berkun

Scott Berkun is the author of four previous books and a sought-after speaker. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired magazine, National Public Radio, and The Huffington Post. From 2010 to 2012 Scott led Team Social at Automattic. The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the future of work recounts his experiences and reflections on leading a distributed team at Automattic. We recently got the chance to ask Scott a few questions about the book and his time at Automattic.

Scott Berkun

Give us a little insight into the title of the book, The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the future of work. What does being pantsless, or pants-free have to do with the future of work?

Scott Berkun: A recent Gallup Poll showed 71% of workers are not engaged in their jobs: it’s a disaster! The book is a wake-up call to the business world and the title reflects that. There has never been any evidence dress codes or nine-to-five hours make people smarter or more productive, yet most workplaces demand these rules: why? The book uses my first-hand experience at WordPress.com to challenge what’s broken in the working world and how to change it.
In Chapter 4, you say, “A great fallacy born from the failure to study culture is the assumption that you can take a practice from one culture and simply jam it into another and expect similar results.” What are the hallmarks of culture that could allow a company to flourish with a distributed workforce?
Berkun: Trust. It’s a five-letter word but you won’t find much trust in most workplaces, which explains that 71% number. I’m certain the 29% of people who are passionate about their work have bosses who trust them enough as adults to decide for themselves how best to be productive.
In Chapter 4, you cite transparency, meritocracy, and longevity as three principles of WordPress’ development as an open source project. How do these principles apply to the culture of Automattic today?
Berkun: Automattic rarely uses email, which means most communication is visible to all, not locked away in email inboxes. Because most employees can launch updates to WordPress.com whenever they wish, launches are frequent and people can see who is productive and who isn’t. And since (Matt) Mullenweg and (Toni) Schneider constantly favor the long term in their decisions, there’s rarely stupid, demoralizing, short-term firedrills.
Of all the things you learned about Automattic, what are the three most important lessons companies can take away from how we work?
Berkun: The single most important lesson is you have to dig deeper to be good. For everyone reading this: you and you coworkers are probably in that 71%. Cherry picking tips and tricks — as managers are prone to want to do — will fail if it’s not paired with creating a culture that can support them. To replicate Automattic’s success demands going deeper into the story of how they hire, how their values impact their choices, and how they use (or don’t use) tools and understand the culture intimately. Only then can people see the steps needed to improve things where they work.
As a manager, you’re experienced in traditional, in-person software creation teams. What was the most important thing you learned from your experience working as part of Automattic’s distributed workforce? What surprised you?
Berkun: I was most surprised to rediscover that it’s the fundamentals. If you can build trust, provide clarity, and hire well, every other obstacle can be conquered. My story in The Year Without Pants follows how I tried to achieve those things despite a decade age gap, 100% remote workers, radically different culture, and more, any of which would be terrifying to most managers on their own, including myself.
If you ran Automattic, what would you change?
Berkun: I’d make sure all my WordPress blogs got more traffic. Just kidding. As the book explains through my own success and failures while working at Automattic, I’d think about how to encourage people to make bigger bets and do bigger experiments.
What’s next for Scott Berkun?

Berkun: Right now, after three years working on this book, I have months of promotion of the book ahead! Writing books is hard but spreading the word about books is even harder. But I’m convinced everyone with a job will find the book, and Automattic’s story, fascinating and useful in thinking about how to change work for the better. I’ll be on book tour in Seattle, NYC, Boston, and other cities.
Check out the book trailer for The Year Without Pants:

Intrigued by the future of work? Want to become a part of it? Automattic is hiring. We want people who are willing to work hard, share their ideas, learn from their colleagues, take initiative to get things done without being told, and those who aren’t afraid to ask questions. Think you fit the bill? Toss your hat in the ring to work with us.
You may also enjoy…

• Automattic is Hiring in 2013
• Toni Schneider – Automattic As A Distributed Work Force
• Five Reasons Why Your Company Should be Distributed
• Inside Automattic: the Company Behind WordPress.com
• How WordPress Thrives with a 100% Remote Workforce

Colorado Flooding Imperils Oil and Gas Sites, Causes Spill

Cleanup under way at South Platte River after tanks leak crude.

An overturned crude oil storage tank lies in the South Platte River on Tuesday. Hundreds of natural gas and oil wells, along with pipelines, were shut down by flooding.

Photograph by John Wark, AP

Patrick J. Kiger

Published September 19, 2013

In the wake of unprecedented massive flooding over thousands of square miles in Colorado, government officials and private companies are rushing to secure the region's heavy concentration of oil and natural gas wells, and prevent dangerous chemicals and toxic waste from contaminating the region's water.  (See related quiz: "What You Don't Know About Oil Spills.")
Late Wednesday, reports emerged that at least 5,250 gallons of crude oil had seeped into the South Platte River in the north-central part of the state. The oil was leaking from damaged Anadarko Petroleum tanks. "Anadarko is responding and has absorbent booms in the water," said a statement from the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Another report noted that Noble Energy was seeing a "limited amount of natural gas" leaking from one of its wells. (See related story: "As the Arctic Melts, a Race to Test Oil Spill Cleanup Technology.")
Inspectors have yet to reach many of the well sites, in part because many roads remain inaccessible, according to Todd Hartman, a spokesman for the Colorado DNR.
"You have operations that are entirely underwater," Hartman said.
In the meantime, crews are monitoring the wells by air and from boats, and also relying upon pressure sensors to remotely monitor conditions inside the wells, according to Colorado Oil and Gas Association president Tisha Schuller. (See related photos: "Oil Spill Sullies Popular Beach in Thailand.")
"As soon as they can get in, they're going in," Schuller said.
Wells and Waste at Risk
It remains unclear exactly how many wells have been affected by the flooding, but the association says that nearly 1,900 wells have been "shut in," meaning that operators have stopped the flow of oil and natural gas to prevent leakage. Crews had to be on-site to shut down some of the wells, while others were equipped for remote shutdown, Schuller said.

A gas well is surrounded by floodwaters in this September 17 photo.

Photograph by R.J. Sangosti, Denver Post/Getty Images

But although no wells appear to be leaking, there are even more serious potential worries, said Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. Well sites often contain tanks of toxic wastewater and supplies of potentially hazardous chemicals used in the drilling or extraction processes, which might be damaged by floodwaters and spring leaks.
The sites also contain what Mall called a "spider web" of myriad pipes connecting the wells to tanks or processing equipment, any of which potentially can fracture. If such failures occur, these substances could be picked up by floodwaters, and then contaminate streams, rivers, reservoirs, and other bodies of surface water, Mall said.
Mall said that groundwater contamination, however, probably isn't a major worry. Although the drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing creates fissures that critics say put groundwater at risk of contamination, almost all of the wells in the affected area appear to be active wells that already have been drilled, and little or no fracking currently is going on, according to Mall and other environmentalists who have been monitoring the situation.
Industry official Schuller agreed with that assessment. "We don't know of any wells [in the flood area] that were being drilled or fracked," she said.
"Still in Triage Mode"
Schuller acknowledged that potential leaks of chemicals and toxic wastewater from the well sites was a "reasonable concern," but said that so far, there's no evidence of it occurring. To the contrary, she said, inspectors have found only "minor incidents" at the sites, including a free-floating tank that turned out to be empty, and other tanks that had been knocked askew on their foundations by floodwaters, but which hadn't failed. There also were two broken pipelines—one of which was repaired by an on-site crew, while the other was shut down remotely. (See related photos: "Arkansas Oil Spill Darkens Backyards, Driveways.")
Colorado DNR spokesman Hartman said that when the inspectors finally do reach the wells, they rely mostly upon visual examination, rather than tests or instruments. "We're looking for sheens on the water, damaged equipment, and obvious things such as an oil tank that might be overturned and leaking," he explained. "We want to get the low-hanging fruit first, and deal with any obvious problems. We're still in triage mode."
How long that inspection process will take remains unclear. Gary Wockner, program director of the Colorado chapter of Clean Water Action, said that environmental regulation in the state is so underfunded that there are only 18 government inspectors to check the wells. "Essentially, we're relying upon the industry, which has the financial resources, to inspect, regulate, and police itself," he said.
One operator, Encana Oil & Gas, said in an email that it had restarted 52 of its 397 shut-in wells. "At this point, we have not found any significant spills or releases, but can't rule out future discoveries until inspections are completed," Encana spokesman Doug Hock said. (See related story: "Oil Spill Spotlights Keystone XL Issue: Is Canadian Crude Worse?")

Masters of Deception: 5 Two-Faced Species

When we call a person two-faced, it’s an insult. But for some clever animals, being two-faced is a high compliment.
Many animals evolve eyespots and even false heads—like the thorny devil—to look more menacing and fake out potential predators.
But a 2010 study showed that the deceptive body parts don’t really have to look like anything—just be larger than life to produce the desired effect (seems to work for Lady Gaga). Here’s a roundup of five amazing “faces” that aren’t actually faces at all.
Peanut-Head Bug
Class act Mr. Peanut might feel it’s a bit déclassé to have his mug compared to a bug, but there’s no getting around it: The peanut-head bug has a head that looks like an unshelled peanut, and it is the coolest thing since sunglasses. Crazy cool.

A peanut-head bug in Costa Rica. Photograph by Robert Pickett, Visuals Unlimited/Getty Images

Fulgora laternaria also goes by the names lantern fly and alligator bug, and one look at its faux crocodile smile and you can see why. Even with a “face” like that, it doesn’t bite, instead sucking up nutrients from plants through straw-like mouthparts.
An insect with no bite would really need other defenses—after all, who doesn’t like to snack on peanuts? In addition to its tricky reptilian head, the three-inch-long (eight-centimeter-long) plant-hopper also has eyespots on its wings. If both these tricks fail, it can also emit a foul, skunky odor for the ultimate turnoff.
(Triple bonus points if this guy made you think of that They Might Be Giants song about prosthetic foreheads.)
 Skipper Butterfly Pupa
This amazing face is definitely a great fake-out. But it’s not a second face because it’s on a pupa, which doesn’t really have a face—at least not on the outside.

The skipper butterfly pupa’s fearsome face. Photograph by Daniel Janzen

Biologist and conservationist Daniel Janzen discovered this pupa of Cephise nuspesez, a Costa Rican skipper butterfly. In a 2010 paper on counterfeit eyes, he writes that in this case, there’s no need for a face-making pupa or caterpillar to mimic a specific predator perfectly.
That’s because the false face-maker just has to look alarming enough that a bird won’t take any chances, leaving the insect to live another day and the trait of the false face to be passed on.
The face is supposed to say to the bird: “You are very close to becoming lunch, flee, NOW,” Janzen said in an email. (Also watch a video about a snake with a tail like a head.)
The Happy Face Spider
When you find out they live in Hawaii, it’s easier to understand why the happy face spider is happy.

A happy face spider guards her eggs. Photograph by Darlene A. Murawski, National Geographic

But a happy face is not the only pattern displayed by the happy face spider. The species can come in different patterns—they can look more like your 1970s smiley face with just a line for smile, have a large red grin, have no smile at all, or even appear a little frowny.
The face is thought to keep predators at bay, but one has to wonder … does it work for the usual reasons or do they decide it’s just too cute to eat?
Draculas gigas
It’s easy to see the simian features in Draculas gigas, sometimes called the monkey-face orchid (though that label is applied to several species). But what’s less obvious is why it bothers.

The monkey-face orchid mimics a mushroom. Photograph by Ron Parsons

Fish and insects might evolve eyespots to startle predators, but why would an orchid need to ape an ape?
Answer: It wouldn’t.
Ron McHatton of the American Orchid Society writes in an email that “the face that you see in D. gigas is more of a coincidence than anything else. Orchids are incredible mimics—fragrance as well as appearance—and it’s really all about attracting the pollinator.”
Which, in this case, are fungus gnats and insects that eat them. What the orchid does mimic is something to attract those fungus gnats: Its lower lip is frilled like the underside of a mushroom, and it gives off a musty, mushroom-like odor.
So the flower has evolved a deception, just one we don’t notice—possibly because we can’t stop staring at that monkey mug.
Twinspot Goby
Between its disguise and its numerous aliases, you’d think this fish was in the witness protection program. It goes by the names eyespot goby, crab eye goby, signal goby, or four-eyed goby, but it can always be called Signigobius biocellatus.

A twinspot goby in Papua New Guinea. Photograph by Michele Westmorland, Science Faction/Corbis

This species also keeps you guessing about where its face is. Two large black eyespots on its dorsal fins can make it look like a scarier fish than it is; its true identity is as a peaceful bottom feeder.
Another benefit to those eyes is that you can’t sneak up on a twinspot goby—or at least, the goby makes you think you can’t. Watch this video of a twinspot goby literally making itself new digs: When it backs out of the hole, it looks like a potentially much larger fish coming out face-first. Talk about eyes in the back of your head.

Watch NASA’s Moon Launch Tonight From the East Coast

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This image shows the Minotaur V rocket that will carry NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) on a pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Va.
Credit: NASA EDGE

NASA is set to launch a rocket tonight at 11:27 pm EDT that will carry a robotic probe to the moon from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia–and it should be visible across a large portion of the North American eastern coast.
The car-sized, scientific orbiter called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is designed to examine the structure and composition of the moon’s tenuous atmosphere and determine what role lunar dust plays in the environment. Mission results are expected to help unlock many similar long-standing mysteries seen on Mercury, asteroids, and even moons of outer planets.
This will be the first lunar mission launched from the northeast coast of North America and the first for the Minotaur V rocket, which is based on the design of intercontinental ballistic missiles from the Cold War days.
Best views of course will be from the surrounding area of the launch site, however millions of skywatchers across most of the eastern coastline of North America will have viewing opportunities too–weather permitting.

This map shows the maximum elevation in degrees above the local horizon the Minotaur rocket will reach across the east coast on Sept.6, 2013. Ten degrees is equal to about the width of your fist at arm’s length. Credit: Orbital Sciences

Orbital Sciences, the company that put together the launch vehicle and integrated LADEE into the rocket, put together a series of graphics that show what to look for in local skies, from Massachusetts to North Carolina.
Here are a few select graphics of what the rocket path in the sky will look like from some landmarks.

View of LADEE launch from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Credit: Orbital Sciences

View of LADEE launch from Battery Park, New York. Credit: Orbital Sciences

View of LADEE launch from Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, VA. Credit: Orbital Sciences

For a much more up-close view of the launch, head to Wallops Flight Facility, where there is a viewing site set up for the public just 10 miles from the launch pad. Nearby Robert Reed Park will have a large screen, countdown, and play-by-play from NASA folks on site starting at 9:30 pm EDT.
If you can’t make it in person, then NASA will be web broadcasting the blastoff starting at 9:30 pm EDT live here. (Check for your local time)

New Cosmic Mystery: Butterfly Nebulae Align

This mosaic shows a selection of stunning images of butterfly-shaped planetary nebulae taken by Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; NGC 6302: NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team; NGC 6881: ESA/Hubble & NASA; NGC 5189: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);M2-9: Bruce Balick (University of Washington), Vincent Icke (Leiden University, The Netherlands)

Astronomers have stumbled on a cosmic mystery surrounding some of the most beautiful objects in our galaxy. 
New deep-sky images of the Milky Way’s central core reveal picturesque butterfly-shaped gas clouds left behind by dying stars called bipolar planetary nebulae. And all appear to be mysteriously aligned with one another.
Planetary nebulae form during the final life stages of sun-like stars when their fuel runs out. In some cases, jets of hi-speed gas from the dying star sculpt the expanding gas bubbles into a symmetrical hourglass-shape. This type of stellar remnant is referred to as a butterfly nebula.
Using both the Hubble Space Telescope and European Southern Observatory’s New Technology Telescope (NNT), researchers surveyed more than a hundred planetary nebulae in the Milky Way’s central core region, and found that bipolar-shaped nebulae display a surprising alignment with each other.
“This really is a surprising find and, if it holds true, a very important one,” said study co-author Bryan Rees, astronomer at the University of Manchester, in a press statement.
“Many of these ghostly butterflies appear to have their long axes aligned along the plane of our galaxy,” he added.
For Rees and his team, the particularly perplexing part is that for all these butterfly nebulae to exhibit this kind of alignment with each other—despite their individual, unique histories and properties—their progenitor stars would have to have all been rotating perpendicular to the clouds of gas and dust that gave birth to them.
“The alignment we’re seeing for these bipolar nebulae indicates something bizarre about star systems within the central bulge,” explained Rees.
One hypothesis for this surprising alignment is that it may be directly tied to the origin of the strong magnetic field emitted by the Milky Way’s bulge. Very little is known about how this magnetic field formed and evolved over time.  As such, this quirky arrangement of planetary nebulae may very well help unlock some as yet unknown history of our own galaxy.

Make the Most of Your Mobile Site

Make the Most of Your Mobile Site

You’ve spent time making sure your blog looks exactly the way you want — it’s got personality and complements your content. But what about the people who read your blog on a phone or tablet? Have you looked at your blog on a three-inch screen to see what they see?
Luckily, it’s easy to make sure your blog looks great, no matter the size of the screen.

Understanding mobile themes.

We assume you want your blog to look good on mobile devices. If you’re using a responsive theme (more on that below), you’re all set. Otherwise, we’ve taken the liberty of checking off the “Enable Mobile Theme” box, found in the Appearance >> Mobile section of your dashboard:

A responsive theme automatically adjusts itself for the size of the screen, so your blog still looks like your blog but is fast and mobile-friendly. Every new theme release is responsive, as are some older themes — see if your theme is on the list.
A responsive theme might shrink your sidebar to make more room for the main column, or turn words into symbols to save space (just like your WordPress.com dashboard does when you use it on a phone), but will always maintain the overall look of your blog: