The basic purpose of the iPhone lock screen is to keep your device from turning on accidentally when it’s in your pocket. But that doesn’t mean that the only thing that matters on the screen is the “slide to unlock” switch at the bottom of the screen, as anyone who’s ever pulled their phone out of their pocket just to check the time can tell you.

While Apple doesn’t make it very easy to customize the lock screen, if you have a jailbroken iOS device you can install a nifty app called LockInfo which lets view Mail, Calendar, SMS, Phone, and other information on your lock screen. Just tap the power or Home button on your device to turn on the screen and you get an overview of your important information, no sliding required.

But what about tasks from a third party calendar/task app like Pocket Informant? No problem. While the developers of Pocket Informant aren’t officially supporting the project, a third party developer has developed a Pocket Informant plugin for LockInfo.

In order to use the widget, you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch with Pocket Informant and LockInfo installed. Then you can download the “Pocket Informant Tasks Plugin for LockInfo Native” plugin from the Cydia store to see tasks from PI on your lock screen.

via Pocket Informant founder Alex Kac’s blog

Astrid is a To Do list or task manager app for Google Android. I’ve never really loved the user interface, but I’ve been using it almost as long as I’ve been using Android, because it’s one of the only free apps that supports synchronizing your tasks with the web-based Remember The Milk task service. Unfortunately, the developers pushed out a new version of the app today, along with a note that future versions would no longer support Remember The Milk sync.

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Astrid 3.5 does add beta support for synchronizing your tasks with Google Tasks, but Google Tasks is a pretty barebones task manager. You can also sync your data with Producteev.

In the meantime, existing Astrid/Remember The Milk users have a few options. You can either continue using the current version of Astrid while declining future updates, pay for a Remember The Milk Pro account at $25 per year so you can use the official RTM app for Android, or find another solution.

I’m thinking about switching to Toodledo for my task management anyway, since that’s the service Pocket Informant already syncs with, and I’m a big fan of Pocket Informant’s mobile task and calendar apps. But I really do like Remember The Milk, so I might just pony up the cash for a Pro account eventually.

Pocket Informant is, hands down, one of my favorite mobile apps. The folks at WebIS have versions of this calendar/task/contact organizer for Windows Mobile, iPhone, and BlackBerry devices. Noticeably absent? An Android version. But not for much longer.

WebIS CEO Alex Kac says that the company will start beta testing Pocket Informant for Android in about two weeks.

This will just be an early beta test for now. It won’t be widely available to the public. And it won’t have all of the final features yet. But it will let WebIS do some bug testing so that the company can officially launch the app in a few months. Right now Kac says he’s hoping to have something available for the public by September or sooner.

You can check out some more early screenshots of the Pocket Informant task manager for Android at the WebIS forums.