Dueling Google Talkabout Posts

I read the following two posts on Google's Talkabout blog. Both are pretty interesting, they talk about Google Talk and why they do not have it set, by default, to pop up a message telling you when a friend is available you can do this in Settings|Notifications
I've actually set this up so that it will not tell me if I have any new messages. I'd like to see a feature that allows you to do a buddy alert -- once -- for a specific friend when he or she signs on/changes their away message/becomes not idle.
Added: One thing that I like about Google Talk is that it does pop-up notifications with IM messages, which is good because I don't have to interrupt what I am doing to dismiss the window.