I do really like the concept of this and keep a full bar of monitors going in my top panel on desktop. I've also done things like tailing the ssh apache logs to watch real time traffic. I've also setup a streaming audio server that played sounds on various events like someone visiting a website or auctions, triggering the stairway camera, making a sale and tracking updates.

I also thought about, but never implemented some sort of lighted display, possibly a dollar sign that slowly turned from red to green as an indicator of the days profit from sales on my e-commerce channels.