New plugins HTML5 MP3 Player with Playlist allows you to easily use the HTML5 audio element to enable audio playback in most browsers, with playlists. Stop CISPA Ribbon places a black ribbon with the words “Stop CISPA” in the top right corner of your website, linking to the Stop CISPA website. Updated plugins BackWPup allows you to backup your WordPress database, files, and more. FoxyPress is a custom plugin made to integrate FoxyCart e-commerce functionality into your WordPress website. Share Buttons by Lockerz / AddToAny helps people share, bookmark, and email your posts & pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, StumbleUpon, Digg and many more. Sharexy is a powerful social sharing, bookmarking, and blog monetization tool. Store Locator allows you to efficiently display and manage your important stores, locations, or other points of interest on your website in a manner that’s easily searchable by visitors.

We already know that WordPress powers about 19% of the web and 48 of the top 100 blogs, and now Joost de Valk has taken that a step further with this amazing infographic. Some cool stats worth mentioning: WordPress powers 72.4 million websites as of March 2012 with half of those being on WordPress.com, an estimated 20 – 25% of new websites published in 2011 were built using WordPress, WordPress powers 22 of every 100 new domains created in the US, and WordPress corners 53.8% of the market when compared to other content management systems. The infographic is definitely worth a quick look through, and perhaps even framing and hanging on a prominent wall in your main room.

Fanwood is an all-purpose, responsive (mobile friendly) theme with 12 optional layouts, per post layouts, multiple drop down menus, 18 widget areas, and more. Museum Core is a simple theme/framework with support for post formats, thumbnails, background, header, menus, and more. Tartan is a very attractive, professional website or blog theme with a hint of a vintage look.

New plugins BotBlocker impedes comment spam bots without hindering users. Spotify Embed allows you to easily embed Spotify playlists, albums and tracks into your posts. WooDojo allows you to enhance your WordPress website with the WooThemes features that you need. Zuppler Online Ordering enables customers to order food online directly from you restaurant’s website. Updated plugins Fast Secure Contact Form lets your visitors send you a quick e-mail message and blocks all common spammer tactics. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. Latest News Ticker lets you have a news ticker across your entire website. Posts By Tag provides sidebar widgets which can be used to display posts from a specific set of tags in the sidebar.

According to a study by Pingdom, WordPress is now responsible for powering 48 of the top 100 blogs! We already know that WordPress powers about 19% of the web, but now we know just how well it fares as a blogging platform in general. Pretty well, that is! Out of the top 100 blogs surveyed, WordPress is just 1 of 12 platforms used, and it’s powering 48 of the them! As a comparison, the next highest result were the 12 blogs running on a custom platform, followed by 8 who declined to comment, and finally 7 running Movable Type. Yes, you read that right. Of the mainstream blogging platforms used by the top 100, WordPress comes in first with 48, followed by Movable Type with 7. That’s quite a substantial lead! Matt Mullenweg expects an even higher adoption rate for WordPress next year, and with these numbers, it’s hard to […]

BirdTIPS is a flexible three-column blog theme. Lyric is a simple, soft, professional, yet lightly colorful theme. Target is a very neat and clean black and white business theme.

WordPress 3.4 Beta 2 has been released. Since the first beta, there have been over 60 bug fixes and adjustments based on testing a feedback. As before, this is not yet meant for live sites, but please do take a few swings at it on a test installation, especially if you are a plugin or theme developer. If you find any bugs, please report them, and contact the support forums if you need any help.

New plugins Sharexy is a powerful social sharing, bookmarking, and blog monetization tool. WP Social Feedback allows your users to submit feedback, view what other users have submitted and vote on other feedback submissions. WP Visited Countries allows you to easily create and publish a map of the countries you have visited and lived in. Updated plugins Bulk Delete lets you to delete posts in bulk from selected categories, tags, or custom taxonomies. Posts 2 Posts allows you to create many-to-many connections between posts of all kinds.