It’s been a while, but here’s what I hope will be the first of many new tools and addons for Blender 2.5x (built against 2.55)
Download here: wahooney_uv_normalize
This addon allows you to normalize your UV coordinates in Blender so that it fills the uv’s from 0.0 – 1.0, with additional controls for preserving aspect with X or Y, scaling the resulting uvs and positioning them and an optional border padding.
For a complete demonstration, from installation to execution check out the video:
Enjoy! Any constructive feedback will be appreciated.