I looked and the side-bar that (I think) you're talking about only shows up on the index.php page at JC's site. It doesn't show up in showflat/threaded as far as I could tell.
As far as the shoutbox, I would search for topics that JC started because I think in one of them someone was trying to port IIP's shoutbox to work with JCDex Pro. I don't recall if they had any success or not.