After the release of CiviCRM version 3.0, CiviCRM team didn't wait and they started with the next version of CiviCRM. CiviCRM goes through a large number of testing cycles before the final version is released to the community and to test all the cool features of CiviCRM, a lot of time is required. CiviCRM version 3.1 is going through all those testing and bug fixing cycles and recently Beta 6 was released with a number of cool features:

• Personal Dashboards - Each CiviCRM user can now configure their own dashboard (CiviCRM Home) to include summary data that's important to their work. Any available 'CiviReports' can be embedded in the dashboard in tabular or graphical format.
• Contact Subtypes - CiviCRM users can now create customisable subtypes for the contacts in CiviCRM
• HTML Emails for Receipts, Event Confirmations etc. - So far the Emails generated by CiviCRM were text only. This on one hand kept the size of the emails small but the emails were quite black and white and there was no possibility of adding your own branding (logo etc) to the email. The new version allows HTML Emails which are saved in the database as templates. Users can now add their organisation's logo, images and HTML tags.
• HTML Layout - CiviCRM version 3.1 allows for the contribution/registration pages to be customisable using CSS
• Usability Improvements - Users will not loose their unsaved changes in a form if they try to navigate away by mistake or connection reset etc.
• Custom Data Groups - Custom Data Groups can be shared between multiple types of Activities, Events, Participant Roles etc
• Access Control for Reports - Reports will now have access control based on an Access Control Lists (ACL)