After meeting the Automatician, John Ford (@iamjohnford) at WordCamp Gold Coast, you quickly get that Automatic, the folks behind Jetpack, are really in the business of making life easier when it comes to running a website.

Enter Jetpack 1.2 and some of the super cool new features:

• Subscriptions – The biggest addition to Jetpack  in my opinion. Now you can easily add  a widget to your sidebar that allows visitors to subscribe to your site, WordPress will automatically send them a notification. Additionally, visitors have the opportunity to subscribe to a post after leaving a comment so they can keep up-to-date with the conversation. Nice!
• Sharing – Not a new feature, but has had LinkedIn and Google+ added to the options.
• Shortcode Embeds – Again, not a new feature, just a few extras added to make life easier on you.
• Extra Sidebar Widgets – RSS links, Twitter and Image Widgets.
• plus a few other little additions.

At the end of the day, if you are not running Jetpack, you should be! If  you are, make sure you update Jetpack  to keep your WordPress powered site in the now!

You can read the official announcement at Announcing Jetpack 1.2 or follow the discussion over at WPCandy – The Jetpack plugin version 1.2 is all clear for take off.