As the author of StackApplet, I will try to answer your questions:

> 1. Whenever one clicks on the "Ask Ubuntu" in the StackApplet's menu it opens http://askubuntu.com/users/recent/### (where ### is the user's id number), but there is no such page here.

Yes, this page was removed and is no longer available. I have corrected the URL in newer versions of StackApplet. Based on your post, I'm guessing you are using StackApplet 1.4, which is the current stable version. Version 1.5 is *almost* ready for release and is considered very stable on Ubuntu. You can find it in the StackApplet PPA [here](https://launchpad.net/~stackapplet-dev/+archive/stackapplet).

> 2. Is it possible to follow new questions being asked here using the StackApplet?

No, this is planned for StackApplet 1.6.