WordPress 2.9, nicknamed Carmen, is now available from your Dashboard or the download page at wordpress.org. Matt summarized several of the the key improvements in his announcement of the new version. Check out this short video for a brief demo of a few new features including an image editor, easier video embedding, bulk plugin updating and compatibility check, and a trash feature.

[wpvideo NBZ853Xn]

So what’s next? Version 3.0 should be out within the next 6 months. There is also talk about a new default theme for 3.0.