I installed 12.04 and yesterday upgraded KDE via backports, and now my panel is blinking when I browse flash websites (Youtube), or chat on Skype. It seems like there is some icon which appeares for a bit of a second and then disappears. It's very disturbing. I recorded it, too. http://youtu.be/E1iOZUw5n7E. It happens faster in reality, but it's interesting to see what's going on with icons.