Xalf is a small utility to provide feedback when starting X11 applications.
Feedback can be given via four different indicators: an invisible window
(to be used in conjunction with a task pager like GNOMEs tasklist_applet or
KDEs Taskbar), an generic splashscreen, an hourglass attached to the mouse
cursor or an animated star.

WWW: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~astrand/projects/xalf/