Seems like the Toronto Design Projects have not been forgotton.
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2007-October/019495.html
Seems like the node improvements will be vast if they go through with the current plans, considering they mention probably getting it to the level of FilterForge.:eek:
EDIT: Here’s their project page, it looks like they’ll be bringing in a boatload of nodes.
http://blender.astrometry.net/wiki/listofnodes
yes, indeed, that’d be awesome! 
and, btw if your an active meting agenda’s reader, then this is a good few days old news, by now 
Added the link to the project page.
A few days old or not, I didn’t see a topic on it in this forum. They’re wanting to bring the node editor possibly to the level of Filter Forge. With this added to the other stuff slated for 2.50, you can say development is just crazy:eek:
Sounds like 2.5 is going to be a freaking powerful tool.
It is going to make 2.45 seem as good as wings3D by comparison
I saw this when I came home from church and read the Sunday meeting
and that sounds so cool. Go 2.50 coders! 
wow, blender is like unstoppable, been an open source software people from everywhere want to contribute to the code. It will always expand, lol. Can you imagine blender in a few years?
Wow!
U of T developing blender!
Blender is going to be insane. I’m pretty sure commercial apps aren’t being developed this fast… am I wrong?
Cinema 4D also develops at a pretty good clip. But Blender development just keeps accelerating.
2.50 will easily be the biggest release in Blender history, let’s count the projects and new stuff
1). Tiles texture
2). Soft shadows, blurry reflections/refractions, QMC.
3). Shaded AO
4). Jahka particles
5). Toronto node editor improvements
6). Cloth
7). Bmesh
8). Project peach improvements
9). Bone heat weighting and dual quaternions
10). Edit mode textures
11). Bevel modifier and other modeling work.
12). GLSL shaders
13). Various new modifiers
14). Micropolygon?
And I’m sure there’s more.
and you forgot the UI refactor!