The Links List is now preserved for posterity in the new plugin directory. It's a lot simpler than i imagined, although it seems that the old plugin site doesn't see it as a new plugin (not that i wanted it to), so i imagine that frontend is going to be deprecated pretty quickly (or maybe that's just wishful thinking).

I'm still hoping this doesn't mean there will be a similar new directory for themes, since

• the licensing needs are substantially different
• the potential for abuse is higher (people uploading themes they don't have the rights to)

It wouldn't be without benefit, but i don't see it having the same feeling that the plugin directory does. And, as I've said before, themes will find their own repositories and homepages, regardless of the presence of an official repository. whether it's designers being fussy, or the nature of skins and themes being somewhat "other" is up for debate, but it's unlikely that wordpress will ever find that one home for wordpress themes.

Kudos to MyBlogLog. they're pulling the same trick as feedburner's feedflare, calling images that are actually generated on the fly. It's a much better solution than javascript. the more companies that realize this, and starting running GD scripts in order to appeal to the myspace crowd, the less whining from people like scoble about wordpress.com's perfectly valid security settings.

i have yet to see whether it works, though. I don't know if i should have the community pointed at sbk.wp.com, or sbk.archgfx.net.