Must-do MessagingMenu and MeMenu Tweaks

I've been using Lucid since it arrived on the scene and loved the social integration it provided. But I never had an always-on Internet connection and so didn't bother with tweaking them. Since now I'm always online at office, i tweaked it to my needs:

Adding a Gmail notifier to the MessagingMenu a.k.a. indicator applet:

go to [1] for instructions and package download. I installed the first package which just displays number of messages in selected labels but doesn't clutter the menu with subject lines (it displays subject in the one-time D-bus notification, though). Second one is for people who love clutter. :p

Removing Evolution from MessagingMenu:

Just remove following the file: /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/evolution [Careful! This removes evolution from the menu for ALL USERS]. There is a way to block it only for you [2], but that doesn't work for me.

Go social from the start:

By default, social apps (Empathy and Gwibber) will start only after manually selecting them from MessagingMenu. Only then status options and textbox appeared in MeMenu. This was annoying for me and I wanted to go social the moment I logged-in.

• Gwibber has a check-box to start on login in its preferences window; solved.
• Empathy is the problem. Open System->Preferences->Startup Applications. The command to be added is empathy -h. '-h' is for hidden; no windows, just in menu, logged-in and ready to chat.

[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/05/gmail-notifier-puts-gmail-in-your.html
[2] http://superuser.com/questions/73200/remove-or-add-entry-in-indicator-applet-ubuntu-gnome