The other day, I ran across the Ayatana Project. I guess that is the parent project for some of the applets at the top of the Ubuntu desktop. The home for the project is here.
I noticed that they have a Evolution indicator. A Thunderbird version might be nice, and a GMail version would be even better for me.
The indicator applet is what got me started looking at this project. I currently have Empathy (allows me Google-Talk access) and Evolution in this applet. I saw a question about Skype, which looked really great. I would love to see what else they can put in here, like GMail, Skype, Facebook, etc.