WordPress 3.0 has been released and you can find it in your dashboard.
Some of the interesting new things in WordPress 3.0:
1. The most interesting thing for theme developers is, it has a new default theme called Twenty Ten.
2. Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing).
3. Facility to merge MU and WordPress.
And some other bug fixes.
Watch this video:
https://videopress.com/v/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.21
Want to wait till WordPress 3.1 is released? Think again or read below:
This time WordPress team will be concentrating on things around WordPress.org, like showcase, Codex, forums, profiles, update and compatibility APIs, theme directory, plugin directory, mailing lists, core plugins, wordcamp.org etc. So WordPress 3.1 may not be coming any time soon.
We have upgraded to WordPress 3.0 and I already love the lighter interface.
Update:
There is a Maintenance mode, which gets activated while you are doing any upgrades. See screenshot below.
And if the automatic update fails, it shows a message at the top of your dashboard..