Well, I have no idea where to get the tech for a toolbar, but we have things on the forum already that do things like that. It's all in your User CP. You can have a message pop-up when you have a new PM, you can subscribe to a thread (in the thread itself under "thread tools") and it will send you an e-mail everytime you get a post in it.
The announcements, you just look for. I know you got that from Gaia, but they force you to read them when you get on there or you can't access your character (or it's just a real pain to). So, I don't wanna annoy our members.
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