configure: error: Your intltool is too old. You need intltool 0.40.0 or later.
Seems like the error message is a bit inaccurate, you're probably missing this software package. You need to install it using apt-get.
ubuntu12.04$ sudo apt-get install intltool
This should fix the error.
BTW: I encountered this issue when installing a very nice small application called alarm-clock. What I like about it is that it can be set two different ways - a) have an alarm go off at a certain time, or b) have a timer count down. See snapshot below.
