what plugin is better to automatically show thumbnail images in excerpts. Please let me know.

This one might work for you http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...-for-excerpts/

can you please build a plugin in the theme itself so that there is no need of external plugins.

I'll add something like that in a later version once my current to-do list is much shorter

Hey Flynn!

What're the chances that you'd publish your todo list as a sticky post? Working under the premise that more information is better than less, we users would have some idea where "we" were headed. You might even agree to receive suggestions as to how we would like your priorities arranged

Believe me, I can think of lots of reasons you might not want to do this. In effect, you're already doing it, but the information is spread around on separate threads. This would centralize the need for both us and you. I offer to "moderate" and try to keep we users polite and respectful.

...just a thought!

There's at least one sticky thread in this forum http://forum.bytesforall.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12 all the time.

It's a To-Do list, listing all open bugs and features. I'll think of a more organized way of listing open bugs, changelogs etc...