I am Getting No Love from the Automatic Plugin Updater

Before I upgraded to version 2.7, I had no problem at all with the plugin updater. Now, WordPress asks me for my login information.

Regardless of what I put in (either my admin information that I use to login to WordPress or the information I use to log in to my ftp server), WordPress tells me that it can’t connect to my FTP server. I’ve changed the permissions in the wp-content folder and have tried every combination of host information (full url, partial url, url with “ftp” instead of “www”) and both usernames and passwords, without success.

Is there some trick that I’m just not seeing or am I just going to have to do without updated plugins?