A little feature which might not be too hard to implement and have some good bang for the buck is a "publish live date". This option could be at the page and module level. There would be a little date/time picker where a content admin could set the show live date into the future (an experation date could be useful as well, but leave that one blank or allow for it's removal).
This would allow companies to launch things on certain days or weekends without manual intervention (if they are vacation, busy, etc). It might also be nice to have content expire at certain times (promotion or sale ends, etc).
By default a page/module would have no date or default to the current date/time. An expiration date wouldn't be set by default, no expiration by default.
Just a thought that came from a client request.