As I mentioned a few months back, wordpress 2.8 has a completely new widget API, which means that I had to do quite a bit of work to get my widgetized plugins ready for 2.8. Fortunately, the new API is much better than the old style. I won’t guarantee that they are without bugs, which is why I am calling them beta. But they should all work with the defaults at any rate. They also have some new features, including several default style templates, which should make styling easier for most users. And for people who don’t like widgets, now you can enter all the options into your template manually, meaning you can use different options in different parts of your theme if you wish.
Also I will be on vacation for a few days, so I won’t be answering questions in the forum until Monday the 15th.