Just saw this DIY kit/project on slashdot, and it reminded me of many of the questions I've seen here on using a seperate LCD for single line outputs and statuses. Might be worth looking into for those of you looking for that type of thing.

http://dangerousprototypes.com/twatch-manual/

There's a link on there after more looking around for "LCD Backpack", it uses the same board to do exactly this type of function.