ActionBarSherlock fills this role pretty well already, even with some added features. But this is good stuff nonetheless. The support library has always been a great addition to the SDK. It really helps avoid writing ugly wrapper classes, or the really ugly old technique of using reflection for API levels. I would like to see them add more widgets though. Such as TimePicker, CalenderPicker, etc. Some support for ORM, and better handling of Fragments, instance states, data persistence and Loaders (less black box-y).

Still it is nice to see the support library progress march on.

These sound helpful too:

http://developer.android.com/tools/support-library/index.html

If you like tinkering you might consider rooting and giving CM10 a try. Back when I used to do root & tinker there were ways, (once rooted, depending on the ROM), to block updates. Rooting is not everyone's cup-o-joe though, some prefer stock-like CM, etc., others like TouchWiz.

Also, nothing cheap about being prepaid. :) Once T-Mo get's their LTE house in order I plan to go back to them with whatever their prepaid / month to month BYOD plan is now.

Indeed what's interesting to me is the lack of a few anticipated things here. I havent followed closely but I thought the next update was going to be Key Lime Pie and was looking forward to a Nexus 5.

The new support library seems interesting though

You misunderstood the analogy (I think). "Free Speech Zones" were nonsense created by the government intending to hide and push speech they didn't like to irrelevancy. The definition of censorship is not the point, but rather the act of pushing things off to a dark corner effectively stifling the content/speech is what is comparable here.

Notifications are per account (on Android Gmail) and you should be able to set up filters to skip the inbox for most messages except the ones you want in the gmail web interface. hth

In Soviet Russia, you power battery?

(this almost seems like a setup!)