I think it'd be nice to be able to have an eclipse-like version of http://mojo.codehaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/ allowing to detect and update new versions of maven plugins and dependencies.

versions-maven-plugin would be invoked under the hood (if possible), so as to minimize code duplication.

• versions:display-dependency-updates scans a project's dependencies and produces a report of those dependencies which have newer versions available.
• versions:display-plugin-updates scans a project's plugins and produces a report of those plugins which have newer versions available.

results could be displayed either as Warning markers in the pom.xml or in a dedicated view (similar to what a sonatype plugin did 2 years ago -don't remember the name).
Quick-fixes would be available to actually update the versions to the latest ones. The feature should also be able to cope with versions defined as maven properties

We should check if/how this feature is implemented in other IDEs (see what works or doesn't) from a UI standpoint.