Another random idea
It might be nice to have a feature whereby I can drag and drop an email address into an IM area (say the Buddy list area of Gaim) and start off a conversation or at least be possible to initiate conversation if the target is not online at the moment. Does it exist yet ? Don’t know for sure.
If only IRC/Freenode mandated registration of nicks with email addresses, then it would also be possible to right click on a nick and fire up the MUA Composer window for the mail.