Alternative apps using the mail and chat notification icons?

[noah++]

I enjoy the convenience and the simplicity of the mail and chat icons in the GNOME notification bar. But I am not sure I like Empathy; and I certainly prefer Thunderbird to Evolution. Can I use the mail icon to launch Thunderbird, and to be notified of new messages from Thunderbird? Likewise, can I use the mail and chat icons to control and to receive notifications from another IM program like Pidgin?

[Gordonbp531]

Have a look here:
http://www.techgarten.com/ubuntu/replace-evolution-thunderbird-completely-ubuntu/

[noah++]

Looks perfect as far as mail is concerned. Thank you.

Edit: And according to another article on that site (http://www.techgarten.com/ubuntu/replacing-empathy-pidgin-ubuntu/), Pidgin easily integrates into GNOME. So I'll tag this topic as solved.

[darklordzim]

my issue is similar, i read and followed that article, problem is this: the notifications only happen to show up if Thunderbird is open, and cloudsn(his work around for 10.10) wont load. is there a way to make either Thunderbird run in the background until called, or make the notifier applet check for new mail like it does with evolution?