The State of the Word is given each year at WordCamp San Francisco. It’s basically an address to the entire WordPress community from Matt Mullenweg, sharing some favorite moments from WordPress’s past and some looks into its future, and this year’s State of the Word did not disappoint. Fortunately, the video was published rather quickly this year, so those of you who missed it can enjoy it now. Here are some highlights in no particular order: A survey was issued to the community, and out of 18,000 responses, 2,800 make their living through WordPress, and consultants charge an average of $58 per hour. This year, 22% of newly registered domains are running WordPress. Future versions will include a responsive admin interface which resizes perfectly on all screen sizes, even smart phones. Drag-and-drop media uploads are planned for a future version. Upcoming releases will feature a more guided experience for new […]

New plugins Social allows you to broadcast posts to Twitter and/or Facebook, pull in items from each as comments, and allow commenters to use their Twitter/Facebook identities. Social Graph Protocol is a quick and easy way for you to integrate all of your websites content into the open graph developed by Facebook. Updated plugins Adsense Float shows Google AdSense ads at a prominent position on your site, which maximizes the CTR and revenue of your site. Ban Hammer prevents people from registering with any email that is listed under your comment moderation blacklist. Easy Modal allows you to easily add a Modal window with just about any content.

Minimal is a warm gold, basically simple, professional theme that would be ideal for blogs or websites of any kind. Radio is a clean, shiny, and perfect for blogs or websites related to radio, broadcasting, news, public speaking, etc. San Kloud is a blogging theme focused on typography and content. Twenty Eleven AJAX is an AJAX-powered Twenty Eleven child theme.

New plugins My Sites Widget displays a list of sites that the current user has access to. Slick Social Share Buttons allows you to add Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, LinkedIn, and StumbledUpon social media buttons in a floating or slide out tab. Updated plugins Category Checklist Tree is a small plugin that preserves the category hierarchy in the post editing screen. Front-end Editor is a plugin that allows you to edit content inline, using the state of the art Aloha “WYSIWYG” Editor. Tallyopia Analytics provides analytics that you can embed into your site using shortcodes or view in your admin dashboard. WP Customer Reviews allows your customers and visitors to leave reviews or testimonials of your services. WP Social Blogroll adds a social blogroll to your blog. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin displays a list of related entries on your site and feeds based on a unique algorithm.

WordCamp San Francisco is often heralded as the largest WordCamp and sometimes considered to be more of an annual WordPress convention, and there are certainly a ton of people attending this year. If you’re one of the many joining in, an impressive list of speakers, and a program for all three days have been posted. There will be plenty to do this year, and if you’re a plugin developer, you may want to take advantage of the Plugin Security Showdown while you still can. Tickets are mostly sold out, but there do seem to be a few microsponsorship tickets available, and walk-in ticket purchases will be welcome until occupancy is reached. If you can’t make it out to San Francisco this year, there are plenty of WordCamps happening soon elsewhere, including Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.

Perdana has a white background and border that gives a shadow effect. zeeBusiness is a two column theme in an elegant and bold design with strong colors.

New plugins Header Image Slider allows you to easily build a slider of your header images. Most Shared allows you to display, as a widget, which of your blog posts have the most social shares. Updated plugins Jetpack supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com. Theme-Check allows you to run checks on the current theme before uploading to WordPress. This plugin uses the same API and is kept more or less in sync with the WordPress.org uploader tool. UI Labs offers experimental WordPress admin UI features with the aim of building upon and enhancing the default WordPress User Interface. These are unofficial core UI experiments – who knows what could happen?

The second beta of BuddyPress 1.5 has been released. BuddyPress development is definitely on the fast track, as this comes just 5 days after the release of the first beta, which addressed almost 500 bugs. Considering the amount of bug fixes, the plan to release the final at the end of this month, and the overall speed of the development releases, plugin and theme developers should definitely start testing their products against the BuddyPress 1.5 betas as soon as possible.