You are absolutely right, in the car, I definitely enjoy the bigness of panucci, mediaplayer, and canola. If you had an applet, I think it would be the same point as all applets, just that on the desktop/home screen, you have lots of information together that is easily viewed in a glance. Honestly, I think that's just something I like on my laptop/desktop, so it seemed interesting for the N8*0. Having a whole slew of applets on the desktop (rss, email, weather, to-do list, etc) while listening to things seems like it would be handy, but I guess it isn't that hard to just flip between things.

Good luck again getting the new gpodder up and going.