If you want to customize the menu bar on your Mac, check out a program called Butler. One of the many useful things tha Butler allows you to do is to fully customize the menu bar. You can create and add your own smart menu items to show recently run applications, currently running applications, perform web searches directly from the menu bar, monitor iTunes, get access to recent entries on the clipboard and more. You can even use Butler to assign hot keys, automate key strokes and more, it's a very flexible and useful program and well worth checking out.