When will the Ubuntu Package be updated?
When the maintainer (Matt) has a little time.
The signmessage feature is nice - but is there a way to verify the message within the GUI?
No, not yet. Anybody know if there's a web page that will do the verification? (would be easy to create one...)
Does the software use https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0021 as the QR format?
Yes.