>I think the dashboard and messaging is a great feature of the UT. The only drawback is that the messages go into private messaging and are never portrayed as 'popups' to the recipient so one must wait for the browser to refresh and hope the recipient notices private messages are waiting for him/her.

You can set the notification on/off in your account setup.
If ON, a wave sound (voice) will tell you that a reply or private msg is waiting.
Of course, this voice may not be acceptable in some work environments.

Otherwise, the only clue about a new private msg was to check regularly the counter in the top toolbar and the listing under the "private" section of the dashboard.

:-)