On December 18th, 2009, WordPress Version 2.9, named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae, was released to the public before the year ends. You can upgrade easily from your Dashboard by going to Tools > Upgrade, or you can download from WordPress.org. The WordPress 2.9 requires MySQL 4.1.2 or greater.
You can read the full list of new features, changes, upgrades, and improvements on the WordPress Codex