I have been lucky enough to work on the EBE 2.0, which should be released before Feb-08. I worked on the theme part (the pretty side) of the EBE, taking some standard HTML templates and creating themes. I am also creating another one for the EBE that was thought of by Lawrence Liu, called Blue World.
Companies both large and small have caught on to the EBE and are waiting the new release. I have several designs in the works for companies that want to use the EBE for their blog on SharePoint.