I know objectdock has various options for making shortcuts appear with a triangle to indicate the application is open. 

However one thing I've noticed since Windows 7 came out is that objectdock is really missing the ability to Pin items in the list of running tasks.

This is a great feature which object dock needs.

Two options are a possibility:

Hide this program from running programs if it exists as shortcut on this dock.

or easier

Pin this application in the dock

This would provide the kind of hybrid shortcut/task which I think is needed.