If you are in Portland, OR and want the chance to win an R2-D2 Droid 2 or just geek out with a bunch of Storm Troopers, then Thursday the 30th is your day.  The special edition D2 launches and the Pioneer Place store is throwing a party.

Oh and if you don’t want the R2-D2 model, but wanted say the Droid X instead, you can buy that and get a free t-shirt.  Fair enough right?  Full press release after the break.  

The hunt for the missing R2-D2 Droid 2 plans came to an end yesterday and today after the last 2 sections were unlocked.  You can now head over to droiddoes.com/r2d2 and check out all of the exclusive content this special edition D2 has to offer.  Well, some of it you’ve already seen from us like the live wallpapers, static wallpapers, and boot animation, but there are still a few hidden gems that might surprise you.

The device officially launches this Thursday for $249 on contract at a select number of stores around the country.  We’ll be in attendance at the Portland party!  Feel free to check out the rest of the list for the west side of the US.

If anyone has an extra $10 laying around and loves to IM their friends through their phone, then you have a new option.  BeejiveIM, which became famous on the Blackberry is now available on Android for a not-so-minimal price.  I’d list out the features, pros/cons, but I’m not the IM’ing machine that many of you are, so I’m going to ask for reader input on this one.  Plus, we have Trillian for free, and it’s amazing.

BeejiveIM worth it?

Best Buy announced a new program today called “Free Phone Fridays” for the month of October.  Each Friday throughout the entire month, BB will feature 4 phones, one from each of the major carriers and to kick it all off, they’ve offered the Samsung Fascinate.  (Read our review here!)

To get the phone for free, as you may have expected, you need to sign up for a new contract or at least add a new line to your existing plan.  Still though, a free Fascinate?  Not a bad deal right?

They’ll announce future Friday phones on the Thursday before at 1PM central time, so stay tuned to next Thursday.  Maybe we’ll see a Droid!

Via:  Best Buy Blog

Voice Plus:  (free) – Allows you to set rules for Google Voice and when you want your phone to use it.  Set up specific area codes, contacts or even groups.  A nice Google Voice add-on especially to those that hate choosing each time they make a call.

So, anyone who knows me should know two things about me:  I love Sapphire and I love me some good ol’ LauncherPro.  When it comes to launchers though there are lots of choices other than LP like ADW, Stock, Helix, and the list goes on. Well we took a poll a lil’ while ago to show what our readers were using then, (Time for an updated poll? I think so!) but there was one launcher missing from that list that lately has pretty much wiped the floor with the competition. That Launcher, is none other than LauncherPro.

Besides ADW, LauncherPro is the definitive Home replacement application. With a widely growing list of widgets and customizable  features…who could argue? I have been fortunate enough to score some time with the man behind the app, Mr. Federico Carnales. Please enjoy this as much as I did; he was a sincere pleasure to talk to!  

Time for some Droid 2 love!  Themes are being ported over like crazy these days including many of the Kangerades we enjoyed on the D1 and of course today’s theme, which is from the now famous rEVOlution theme originally created by Manup.  Times are exciting in the Droid family with each device having been rooted and developer communities becoming stronger by the day.  Who’s ready to customize that D2?