Playing with Moodle 1.9 (release notes here) there appear to be a number of useful (and fun) new features. To name but a few, and in no particular order:

• Notes – the ability to add comments about a student in their profile – visible to teachers but not the student. Likewise, a teacher can add notes in his/her own profile – could be useful as a memory jogger for those of us who don’t ‘do’ paper any more!
• Interests/tag pages – while we are in the user profiles: users can add key words relating to their personal interests; these are tags,  then linked to a tag page where (network permissions allowing)  blocks with  related flickr images and youtube videos can be added. Although Flickr’s and Youtube’s interpretation of the interest tags might just need to be watched  at times!
• Bulk  user actions – all those users adding interests to their profiles – there is much more you can do with them en masse now! For example, it is simple now to upload a zipped file of user  images which , if correctly named,will go straight to the appropriate user’s profile.
• Outcomes -great potential here, in an already majorly improved Gradebook. There is the facility to add expected Outcomes in courses and individual activities and grade them alongside the regular mark.
• Quiz question Control - the questions you generate for your quizzes can now be used by others in other courses throughout Moodle; equally, you can keep them private now to you. Share or secrete!
• Curvy corners - perhaps the least pedagogically useful feature but certainly the most aesthetic: the new Custom Corners theme by Urs Hunkler (using the multi-facted Chameleon theme engine by the way) See image above.