If things seem to be a little quiet on the Swype front these days, it is probably because they have been working extra hard behind the scenes with carriers and phone manufacturers to introduce a handful of new features.  Sprint Nexus S 4G owners have the opportunity to download a new version (3.25.91) today, before the general public.  The Swype team has added in gestures to make for easy copy, cut, and selecting, as well as a way to quickly launch some of your favorite apps like Twitter, Facebook and Google Maps.

The plan is to roll this out to NS4G owners first (download here) and then make it available to everyone in their beta program “soon.”

What are your current thoughts on Swype?  Was certainly one of the top keyboards of 2010, but now we have so many incredible options to choose from like Swiftkey, FlexT9 and A.I.Type.

We may have just been introduced to our new favorite keyboard.  OK, that may be jumping the gun a little, but A.I.Type (AIT) Keyboard has certainly left a strong first impression on us in just the few short minutes that we have had with it.  Following Swiftkey’s lead, AIT employs the text-predicting model rather than the swiping, and does it quite well.  Not only that, it also brings with it some of the BlindType-esque error correction engine that we saw in August of last year.  You can miss letters while typing words, but as long as your are in the vicinity of the correct letter, AIT should give you proper results.

We should also point out that this keyboard is fully customizable.  First, they offer you an array of popular keyboard layouts, but then let you take it to a new level by allowing custom background images and key colors.  Oh yeah – it’s also free.  

I’d say at this point, we’ve probably talked enough about Swiftkey and their new X keyboard for you guys to know how much we enjoy it.  Seeing it as today’s free app of the day through Amazon is probably making it one notch cooler though.  Go grab one of the best text predicting machines on the planet!

Market Link

Cheers Chris, EvantheGamer, Albert and everyone else!

One of our favorite keyboards of all time, Swiftkey X, has come out of its closed beta and entered the Android Market for both phones and tablets.  Actually, today marks the first anniversary of this fantastic keyboard, so the crew behind it has decided to cut the price for both by 50% or so to $1.97.  We tend to avoid recommending things, but this is one of those apps that we would suggest you jump on while it’s so cheap.  The ability that Swiftkey possesses to correctly predict letters, words and even sentences is unlike anything we have seen from any other keyboard in Android.

Market Links:  Tablet X | Phone X

Anyone using Swiftkey as their daily ‘board?

Cheers Shane, Giorgio, Barry and others for the reminder on this!

Members of Swiftkey’s VIP beta program, please check your inboxes.  You should have received an invitation to download the new version for both tablets and phones within the last couple of minutes.  Each of the updates appear to be more than just bug fixers, especially the tablet version which has reworked layouts for both portrait and landscape.

If you haven’t signed up yet to be a part of their beta program, now would be a good time to head over to their site.  As many of you know, Swiftkey is easily one of our favorite keyboards of all time.  

If you own a tablet or plan on buying one in the near future, there is one app that I recommend you pick up immediately:  Thumb Keyboard.  To put it simply, this app makes typing on a big screened device so much easier than any other app on the planet and that includes Swiftkey’s Honeycomb keyboard.  Thumb Keyboard allows you to quickly type while using only your thumbs, utilizes built-in themes for different looks, predicts with the best of them, and includes more customizable options to make it fit to your personal needs than any keyboard I’ve used.  Oh, and they just introduced multi-touch in the latest update making it that much more impressive.  Best $2.50 I’ve spent since buying my XOOM on day 1.

Market Link ($2.50)

*The Amazon Free app of the day is Pac-man.

*Yesterday we covered Plants vs. Zombies.

If you have a suggestion for a future App of the Day, send it on over.

Swiftkey X has arrived.  We all knew that Swiftkey was almost too good at reading your mind, right?  It’s actually hard to imagine that it could get better at it, but it just did.  You may remember a beta version that went into testing a little over a month ago that analyzed your Facebook, Twitter and Gmail accounts?  Well, that version has now become public as version X.  In the past, Swiftkey would simply analyze all of the texts you would send, but with the ability to analyze all of your social networks, it can truly learn from the way you talk to your friends, family and random iPhone friend.  It truly is one of the best keyboards on Android.  

Swiftkey, one of our favorite keyboards of all time, received an update today to beta version 2.0.2.8 which includes enough new features and stability that their team has opened up the program to everyone for one day only.  Normally a “VIP” program, Swiftkey beta has been something that only a select group of people were able to join, sort of like the old days of Swype – you should definitely jump on this opportunity.

Join at this URL using code #swiftkeyFRIDAY:  http://www.swiftkey.net/vip