Swype has finally dropped its Beta tag and gone official—which means it's now in the Play store, easy to install, and no longer free.

Swype, the sliding keyboard that dramatically speeds up typing on Android, just got a little more clever. As well as offering a more fluid typing experience, it now crowd-sources your autocorrections—which should (hopefully) make for fewer embarrassing mistakes.

Nuance is reportedly acquiring Swype, the company behind the popular keyboard alternative for Android. The purchase price is estimated to be a cool $100 million.

Swype was really the first replacement keyboard for Android that Droid owners could show off to their snarky, iPhone-wielding pals to make them a just a little jealous. Today it's getting better.

This is so cool. Hank Torres is paralyzed from the shoulder down but with the use of Swype and a head tracking device he was able to set the Guinness World Record for fastest hands free typing.

Swype has been my favorite way to type on an Android phone, but it's been kinda limited in what phones can run the keyboard software. Until now! All you have to do is register at Swype and download.

I love seeing companies reinvent the wheel, but I'm not quite sure 8pen is the answer to any smartphone text input woes we might have. After all, we already know Swype is a worthy alternative, so do we need 8pen?

We've caught plenty of glimpses of Samsung's 7" Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab, but now they're done beating around the bush. Here's nine minutes and change showing pretty much every feature it has to offer. And it looks awesome. [Crunchgear]

There are tons of ways to tap text into your Android (y'know, when you're not just talking to it). CareAce looked at the stock 2.1 keyboard, Better, Swype Beta, TouchPal, SwiftKey Beta, and ThickButtons and sorted out what's what.

The Swype text entry interface that's been tearing up Android phones, World Records and maybe iPhones was spotted doing more of the same on a large touchscreen at the Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference. Spoiler: It looks like Swype, but bigger: