We’ve been hard at work on version 3.0 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress. It’s a major rewrite of the plugin code that includes a new configuration page, improved signup and activation, and some new features. We’ve shed most of the legacy code that was maintained for backwards compatibility with ancient versions of WordPress, and redesigned the code so we can bring you new features in coming months.
Since it’s a major change from previous versions, we could use your help testing the new plugin before its final release. If you’re comfortable manually installing a plugin in WordPress, you can download akismet.3.0.0‑RC1.zip or use the 3.0.0‑RC1 tag in the Subversion repository.
Try it out and tell us what you think – we have some exclusive Akismet swag for those who send bug reports and the most helpful feedback. Bug reports and detailed feedback is best sent via our contact form. You can leave general public feedback in comments below or on Twitter.
If you’re not sure how to install the plugin manually, or you’re not willing to run pre‑release code on your site, we recommend waiting for the final release, which we expect to coincide with next week’s launch of WordPress 3.9.
Akismet 
Reblogged this on Automattically Kraft and commented:
For all of us using self-hosted WordPress sites and willing to give something new a spin.
hey guys, I’ve just added this to one of my quiet sites for a look and its telling me my subscription is missing. is the beta only setup to work with paid accounts?
There’s a bug in its handling of very old accounts. It doesn’t prevent the plugin from working, just causes some confusing messages on the configuration page. We’re working on a fix now.
Nice! Couple notes from installing the beta (Bluehost, WP 3.8.2 with JP 2.9.3)
On activating, was surprised to NOT see a Settings link on the plugin row on the plugins.php page (2.6.0 had one) – had to “guess” to go look under Jetpack for settings
On activating, success announcement green background overlaps Help drop down control and Hello Dolly – looks a bit unpolished there
While logged into WordPress.com, I clicked on the “contributing a token amount” link https://akismet.com/account/upgrade/ in the header, but I guess since I wasn’t really logged into akismet, I ended up on the generic http://akismet.com home page. 😦 Once I clicked on the Login with WordPress.com button, that link worked correctly. Maybe we need to preserve the request across the login to take them to a contribute a token amount page? At the end of it all, I also actually didn’t see any way to contribute a token amount on https://akismet.com/account/upgrade/
Disconnecting my key worked fine.
Reconnecting via my already connected Jetpack worked fine.
Was glad to see no errors after all this in my webroot error logs, nor in wp-admin error logs
Nice work!