I just want to share with you about gnome-osd, a GNOME desktop add-on that I find handy when working on my computer’s desktop.
This add-on provide informational on-screen display when triggered by certain events such as new email, somebody mentions your nick over the irc and when the music player changes the song.
Personally, I use gnome-osd with Xchat IRC client, when I’m in a mood for online chatting with friends.
To use gnome-osd, you need to install ‘gnome-osd’ package and configure it by accessing System->OSD Notifications. You can enable certain triggers by checking the appropriate box on the dialog box as shown here :
Here’s an example of gnome-osd in action:
From the screenshot, you can see that I’ve tweak the settings a little bit to display the messages on the lower right corner of my screen. The OSD is triggered whenever anybody mentions my nick on the IRC.