A though on the applet not appearing for some people: This status menu applet is written in Python. Sometimes, when a status menu python applet is the first python program you install, the app managers **** up somehow, and something ends up not working, and the status menu applet you installed doesn't show up.

So, as an alternative, I recommend uninstalling and reinstalling, and if THAT doesn't fix it, uninstalling, installing python by itself first, with "apt-get install python" as root in x-terminal, and then trying to install the applet again.