There are many annoyances in these new unfinished desktops, but one I miss the most was the Gnome2 clock applet. A must if you have people in other timezones:
That's why I don't use any of those fancy desktops, I don't tolerate it when stuff I use breaks. I have a dockapp from 1999 I don't want to live without. It's one of the reasons why I just use openbox without a DE. My desktop hasn't lost anything in more than a decade, since I switched from Win2k.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/1Ftcd.png
Note the map with day/night marked. Allows one at a glance to figure out if it is a reasonable time to make contact.
I've managed to get a version almost as good on a Saucy laptop, but now Locations doesn't stay open by default, and has some new bugs.
These are the kinds of rich functionality that consistently get lost in the "reinvention shuffle" linux software goes thru every 5 years.