I KNOW this has been suggested before, but perhaps a long needed feature to contact those in game apart from IRC would be to have a messages tab, attached to the Your PDA.

This way there is a better way of knowing when you have a buddy note, or an offline message.

+1. As usual when this idea pops up. :p

Maybe now that the devs have an artist, the UI will be reworked a little. Could be a good time for this to sneak in.