As always, rules for this thread:
-DO NOT post suggestions.
-DO NOT critique unreleased features. Wait until you've had a chance to try them before passing judgement.
With that out of the way:
Here's a screenshot of what I've been working on in game as of late. Note that this one is in my main world, not on the SMP test-server a maintaining a proper villager population over there proved "problematic" :)
I'm also continuing with the ongoing process of optimizing the mod code for SMP. My last round of changes seem to have helped a lot of people out, so I'm thinking that I'm getting towards the final leg of this process. Optimization is not something that is ever really complete, but you run into a point of diminishing returns where increasing amounts of work are required for ever smaller improvements, so it largely comes down to a judgement call as to when to call it "done". I'm sure I'll always be optimizing small things here and there along the way mind you.
So unfortunately, nothing really exciting for me to hint at or report at the moment. I'm very much looking forward to getting all these small things out of the way over the next couple of weeks and returning back to my work on "Phase 1". Hopefully that will give me a good solid month or so to work on new content before Mojang throws the next monkey-wrench into things ;)