Firstknight popped by and left a comment on the recent news article about Ultima IX: Redemption, giving a brief update on where his Beautiful Britannia project is at:

Some hints to the progress of BB:
Well, I had to find out, that focussing onto certain tasks makes sense, mainly because of the fact, that I was not able to made seenable progress between February and April. Since the Middle of May things went slowly better, and I was able to create some nice textures for the houses in paws. Related screens will be avaibable soon here.

So, I decide to focus on retexturing for 2012, with a release at the end of this year.
In 2013 I will continue building on the cove expansion, a release including a playable (but not completely finished) build of this area will be released at the end of 2013 then.

Means, progress is more slowly than expected by me at the beginning of 2012, but still being made.

Iceblade also left a very brief comment concerning the status of Forgotten World:

RL hitting me up hard, probably will be rough for another month. Hopefully I can snatch up a few days to compile the unreleased patch for another release.

In other words, both projects are progressing, if somewhat slowly. Which, as always, is still good to hear.