Have you tried adding the pools that awesome miner uses in the web interface first? It seems to work if the pool URL entered via the web interface matches what awesome miner is setting exactly.

Do we have a feel for how loud these will run under typical usage? Just a ballpark - is it closer to a GPU at max fan, or more similar to the fans on a typical ASIC (much louder)? I watched the video in whitefire's thread, but without a basis for comparison, I couldn't tell if it was really loud or if that was just the gain on the mic.