In February 2009, Arron La's $0.99 Advanced Task Manager was one of the first paid apps on Android, allowing T-Mobile G1 users to do what was then a novel thing -- close applications. (We immediately bought a copy.) Today, the app is all but obsolete, its functionality baked right into Android's core, but Arron's still making thousands of dollars a month. Why do we bring this...

Until now, Milestone owners could do nothing but to envy Droid users rocking the Froyo upgrade; however, according to Motorola's recently published timeline, the former device is now slated for the same dessert party in Europe and Korea in Q4 -- potentially a few weeks later than its American cousin. Meanwhile, said upgrade is "under evaluation" for Canada, Latin America, Mexico and Asia-Pacific sans Korea. But here's the real heartbreaking news from the same chart: unlike their American counterparts, the Dext and Backflip will not be getting an Eclair update in Europe, Latin American and Mexico, while Canada and Asia-Pacific still have a glimpse of hope.

What we're looking at here is allegedly the leaked over-the-air update to Froyo that Verizon plans on deploying to Droid X customers in the next few weeks, which means two critical things for customers: it should generally be faster all the way around, and -- of course -- you've got support for Flash, which...

Android: The desktop version of Trillian Astra won (however fudgingly) our Hive Five for best desktop IM client, and now you can get the same polished, account-syncing, tabbed-messaging IM client on your Android phone.