I'm a little surprised that they removed the revised version of the bar. I found some of the topics listed there interesting. Seems like they responded to the technorati rather than what would best serve their needs along with their users. Facebook made changes all the time - and then people would start organizing groups on facebook opposed to the changes. But eventually the users adapted and all was forgotten.

I suppose one option is to move the bar to just the search area, where people are willfully looking for particular types of information.