email and facebook notification help

[bsm428]

I have not been able to find much info on this, so im assuming its not a common problem. I switched to the motorola droid from a blackberry storm. I dont use the gmail, but rather a @live.com account that i have set up on my droids email app. i have the refresh rate set as often as possible and ihave notifications turned on. same with the facebook app. i have never gotten a single notification and have to always manually check for new emails or facebook notifications. any help on how to get these through as a notification would be great.

also, is there a way to change the appearance of the sms threads without changing the entire theme?

thanks, bryan