WordPress 3.4 is ready for beta testers!
As always, this is software still in development and we don't recommend that you run it on a production site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), please report it, and if you're a developer, try to help us fix it.
If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.4 in May. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version. If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs.
Here's some of what's new:
- Theme Customizer with Previewer
- Flexible Custom Header Sizes
- Selecting Custom Header and Background Images from Media Library
- Better experience searching for and choosing a theme
And some of the under-the-hood changes:
- New XML-RPC API for external and mobile applications
- New API for registering theme support for custom headers and backgrounds
- Performance improvements to WP_Query by splitting the query (Please test!)
- Internationalization improvements (improved performance and locale support)
- Performance and API improvements when working with lists of installed themes
- Support for installing child themes from the WordPress Themes Directory
Remember, if you find something you think is a bug, report it! You can bring it up in the alpha/beta forum, you can email it to the wp-testers list, or if you've confirmed that other people are experiencing the same bug, you can report it on the WordPress Core Trac. (We recommend starting in the forum or on the mailing list.)
Theme and plugin authors, if you haven't been following the 3.4 development cycle, please start now so that you can update your themes and plugins to be compatible with the newest version of WordPress.
Download WordPress 3.4 Beta 1
I've decided writers are pretty good observers of people and trends in our culture. More than that, though, I seem less and less able to keep my mouth shut about things. Now this particular issue isn't exactly important, more like fun, but I just gotta say... Match.com is advertising something "new" called The Stir. The first time I watched the commercial I must have been tilting my head from side to side like my dog does when he's confused. What a great idea for a new way to meet people! We'll actually go somewhere and, wait for it, talk. In person and everything. Okay, this might be new for the internet generation, but didn't we once call these get-togethers parties?
The match.com folks have been around for a while, so I know they're successful. They enticed people to take part in on-line dating and, apparently, forget they could find a date out in the real world. Now they're organizing their own events and inviting the on-line lovelorn to the party. I guess, everything old is new again. What will they think of next? 
