Well, the rumors were correct for the most part. The briefing was essentially an announcement that Kepler was working to spec and so can fulfill its mission to find the frequency of earth size planets in habitable zones. The data used to demonstrate this was an extremely accurate light curve for a known hot jupiter in the Kepler field of view. The accuracy of the light curve was so great, they could see a secondary dip from the occultation of the planet. This corresponded to the needed accuracy to detect "earths". It also meant some atmospheric analysis would be possible for hot jupiters (not earths).

Phil's comment below about needed ground confirmations was also supported. While they have plenty of dimming light curves, they need to know facts about the stars before understanding the nature of the planets. That is helped by ground based observations. The Kepler people were keeping to their previous announcement that they would likely issue a report early next year with the details of many short period planets (possibly >100, maybe 100's).

Given that at least 3 transits need to be observed for confirmation, earth planets in the habitable zone would take a minimum of 2+ years to get the 3 transits. Given the necessary time to confirm such important data, it will be 3 years or so before "earth" announcements would start to happen.

One thing I hadn't previously understood, was that because of the distance involved in the targeted FOV(another spiral arm of the galaxy), detailed followup studies on found earths would not be effective. We will need to search closer to the solar neighborhood to find candidates for potential atmospheric studies of "earth's." What Kepler will define is the frequency we can expect and possible some characteristics of the target stars that we could look for in doing the close in search. Of course, such "earth" atmospheric followups are very long term and to be done with next(or greater) generation telescopes.

While the results trickly out slowly, you've got to like the inevitability of finding some answers to age old questions.