You may have noticed that announcements use templates now. Just remove the date from the template and it will not show

b.    Publish date is required (no need to be...  if blank just publish!) AND it uses that date in the subject

Publish date will only be blank if you delete it.. for new announcements the publish date is set to the current date, so the field will hardly ever be blank at all. Its usage in the subject is not mandatory, just change the template

c.    Does not remember that I unchecked the Track number of times link is clicked.  It is always checked.

I noticed that too. Actually, this is not part of the module, but is embedded in the tracking control. I will have a look at it to see if this can be fixed. Mind you, a new version (03.04.00) is already submitted to the release process, so any fixes in this will not be part of this version

d.    The date is displayed as long date ...  which is very long..   and makes the subject line too long    Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Correct, however, this has been the behaviour of the announcements module since ages (think IBuySpy). With the templating system, you can put the publish date in a different location (and in a different text size even). For the version after 03.04.00 we will look at an enhancement of the templating, which will allow you to pass the formatting for dates and numbers...