WeDesignerWall currently has a pretty good list of WordPress Theme Hacks. This is a good resource if you either trying to create your own theme or customize someone else’s.

These is also a section on one way to get customized titles. They use this example:

<title>
    <?php
    if (is_home()) {
        echo bloginfo('name');
    } elseif (is_404()) {
        echo '404 Not Found';
    } elseif (is_category()) {
echo 'Category:'; wp_title('');
} elseif (is_search()) {
    echo 'Search Results';
} elseif ( is_day() || is_month() || is_year() ) {
    echo 'Archives:'; wp_title('');
} else {
    echo wp_title('');
}
?>
</title>

I personally use something similar for this page:

<title>
<?php /* Title for homepage is "blogtitle | blogdescription", all other pages get "pagetitle | blogtitle" */
    if (is_single() || is_page() || is_archive()) { wp_title('',true); echo ' | '; bloginfo('name'); } 
    else { bloginfo('name'); echo ': '; bloginfo('description'); } ?>
</title>