Aha! Yes, it is reasonably easy to cause a string to appear at the right hand end of the menu bar. It's an option on the login settings. Also, your system definitely indicates Mountain Lion (10.8.5). Nothing seems excessively obsolete on your reported hardware, so it seems likely to me that you are right: the issue is with Podium not liking your graphics card or perhaps simply needing more hardware resources for a model as complex as you are trying to render. I am not a Podium user, so I can't offer any insight about that but perhaps another sketchUcation member will chime in...