Yeah the usability sucks. Right now the problem is that one can use it after 15 minutes of training and become expert in may be few hours of training, after which you can create super complex sites like twitter/HN.
I am doing a UX rewamp and trying to minimize the learning curve. The next version with some major UI modifications and support for all browsers should be out in 2 weeks. Do follow me on twitter or drop a line and I will make sure you know.
I worked for Project Looking Glass, added natural language voice control. It was really cool demo and stuff but didn't go anywhere as the parent project was always in a demo like state itself.
I did continue to work for Google and played a part in some of the SoC activities for next year.
As far as I know, there was ONE GUY in Germany that managed to install it and get it running. He blogged about it under the title "That's Real RAD!" in German - but my lack of autotools skill and inabiilty to properly use qtruby as a "lib" meant that the install process was pretty diabolical.
What did you work on? Did you ever do anything with it after SOC?
I am doing a UX rewamp and trying to minimize the learning curve. The next version with some major UI modifications and support for all browsers should be out in 2 weeks. Do follow me on twitter or drop a line and I will make sure you know.