Having several blogs can be a bit hard to maintain, and micro blogging services like Posterous and Tumblr provide a quicker way to post content to the web. However, WordPress has added features which are similar to Posterous in the form of post by email to WordPress.com blogs.

Cory Miller who is one of the guys behind iThemes.com has published a long but excellent piece regarding his thoughts on why there needs to be a commercial WordPress plugin market. Honestly, I think Cory’s post has been the best on the subject and I don’t disagree with much of what he said. In terms of supporting the commercial interest of plugin authors from the plugin repository, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. We already know that theme authors who sell their themes under the GPL license have been rewarded via a commercial themes page on WordPress.org. Back in July of 2009, the BlogHerald asked Matt if the same thing would happen for plugins:
Commercial plugins are already seamlessly integrated with the plugin directory.
I don’t know exactly what that means but if we take a look at the page that lists the restrictions and qualifications to [...]

Neoclassical

Two column revamped version of the Neoclassical theme with support for automatic thumbnail generation and 125×125 ads
ProSmooth Series

A professionally designed classy and clean design with a smooth and elegant accented color scheme. Designed to be light weight and fast loading, featuring a fixed width centered layout that’s compatible with the latest wordpress and widget ready.
Unfocus Green

Two column, fixed width theme in simple shades of green
Dark Forest

Dark Forest 02 is a simple free WordPress Theme with two Sidebars a 160px (Adsense) and Widget Support. There is an Option Page to populate the Footer. Page in German.
Simple Magazine Purple

Three column, fixed width, gravatar and widget ready theme with a theme options panel and support for thumbnail Images with auto-scaling

New Plugins
To do list
This plugin provides users with a to-do list feature. You can configure the plugin to have private to-do lists for each user or for all users to share a to-do list. The shared to-do list has a variety of settings available. You can assign tasks to a specific user and have only those tasks that were assigned viewable to a user. You can also assign different permission levels using capabilities.
Leave-a-Note Visual Commenting
Leave-a-Note is a plugin for Wordpress, that transforms your comment section into a visual representation, making each comment a little post-it notes.
PHP Browser Detection
This plugin provides a number of template tags to get browser info, including conditional statements to test for each browser, versions of Internet Explorer, mobile browsers, and iPhone visitors.
Technical Support
Technical Support for WordPress is a way to provide quality support to your clients. After setting up a WordPress powered website for your client, [...]

Most of you have heard by now of the departure of Lester Chan from WordPress plugin development. While he will continue to update his plugins as needed, all support will be terminated.
As a plugin author myself, I’m not surprised by this news. With the world economy still in the pits, more plugin authors are feeling the crunch. While they would like to release free plugins for all, at the end of the day, there are bills to pay and mouths to feed.
Within this article (rant?), I will go over the types of plugins I would pay for, an argument for paying for plugins, and go over several business models I see popping up.
Plugins I Would Pay For
Here are several categories that make a plugin something I would pay for (yours will undoubtedly be different).

The plugin is a timesaver – Plugins such as Akismet and WP Spam Free [...]

Craig Buckler of SitePoint.com published a neat guide today on how to split WordPres content into 2 or more columns. The explanation dives into various functions and parameters with use of the Read More tag but within the comments of the post, someone mentioned a plugin called WP Post Columns by Sam Burdge. I downloaded the plugin and to my surprise, it works very well and does not require any code editing. The magic lies within the shortcodes that need to be inserted into the content. For example, if you wanted two columns within your content, you would use the following shortcodes.
[column width="47%" padding="6%"] Column 1 content goes here. [/column]
[column width="47%" padding="0"] Column 2 content goes here. [/column]
[end_columns]
There are shortcodes for up to four columns within the content. I’ve rarely come across a theme or a WordPress powered site displaying content in this fashion but I imagine it would work [...]

How many plugins do you run on your website that were created by Lester ‘GaMerZ‘ Chan? I’m guessing at least one or more. On WPTavern.com, I use three of them. I’ve been a huge fan of Lester ever since I discovered his assortment of plugins that provided functionality I didn’t think any WordPress site would want to be without. Features such as polls, easy page navigation, and nifty stats. I learned today that Lester is unable to provide support for his plugins due to a full time job he recently accepted. However, he states that he will try to keep the plugins working with newer versions of WordPress as time allows while also keeping the forum open to enable the community to help each other.
As you all know, I have been doing WordPress plugins and supporting it for the past 6 years. These 6 years of my life, I have [...]

WordPress for Android 1.0 Release: The Open Source WordPress for Android application is now available for download. This is in addition to the WordPress for iPhone and WordPress for BlackBerry applications that are already available. It is built on top of the wpToGo application which has been taken over by the WordPress team and released as this Open Source Application. You can follow the development of the application at dev.android.wordpress.org and look for support on the support forums.