I had a live wallpaper that would flatten the battery overnight, like you I now have a static one.

Yep, that is exactly what happened on the first night!

Bear in mind that iTunes maintains it's own podcast directory. There are several podcasts that aren't available very easily outside of iTunes, it's not a reflection of the player but the person who uploads/submits it and doesn't have it on other directories or as a straight RSS feed.

Another vote for BeyondPod. You can also add shows manually if the directory search doesn't find them.

Dead Space and Asphalt are good games available free on Samsung Apps !

Advanced Task Killer is good, it kills all your background apps that you may not even know were running, it will help improve battery life

When I got my phone, the manufacturer recommended it.

Task killers on android are a no-no. They shouldnt be used. Dont waste your time and space installing one.

Could you explain why please? It seems to have made a difference to my battery life...

This article does a good job of explaining why.

This article explain how multi-tasking works in android.

You can google as well, if you want more info. There are loads of articles on why task killers arent a good idea in android.

Would also recommend NoLED, which provides visual notification for missed calls, texts, emails etc. Pretty essential for the S2.

Touchpal or Swiftkey are good replacements for the stock keyboard.

SlideIT is a great keyboard. Instead of tapping the keys, you slide your finger over the letters. Its very fast and accurate. Once you slide, you will never go back to tapping. Have a look at the youtube video on their market page to see what I mean.

Take a look at Llama. It allows for automation based on which mobile phone mast you are connected to.
I use it to turn wi-fi on and off at specific locations, and to change between profiles at specific locations and times, but it is much more powerful than that - and FREE!!!

In your first link about task killers there is a paragraph on when should I use a task killer, so there is obviously a use for task killers but not for daily use.

Not sure if these are the best of their breed but a couple of things I've installed are,

APN lock (CHR)
APN Backup & Restore
Visual Task Switcher
Tag Home.
Android Assistant.

I've also rooted my phone, but not done much with it, and installed a few scripts to allow me to easily switch write access to the system partition on and off.

Of the above the one that does the most good is probably the APN lock which simply changes the name of data carrier so you can stop your phone making a connection. My phone always seemed to mysteriously connect regardless of my turning data on or off. I've noticed a definite improvement in battery life since then, although there's a possibility that completely draining the battery and then charging before turning the phone back on has had a bit to do with it.
I no longer use the automatic task killing but think that there is a definite difference between automated and manual killing of tasks and that the main problems with automated task killers is that they shouldn't be used on scheduled tasks. It's kind of the same thing as the argument about leaving neon lights on due to the high power used when first switched on. If a task is automatically restarted as soon as it's stopped then it's simply a waste of power and cpu time to turn it off in the first place. Moreso if it saves it's state to the SD because both saving and reloading might use more power than to internal memory and take more time. Loading an app from SD will also require more time and power. The one thing I'm going to look for is a decent app that will allow me to stop reloading of non-essential services, for instance my phone has a crap looking digital clock widget, which I don't use but the service keeps loading.
I'm also looking at replacing the pre-installed software such as Android Market with their latest updates in order to save on Rom space.

Yep you can use them to kill apps that are not behaving correctly i.e. not releasing memory/resources. However if you didnt didnt have a task killer, you could just uninstall the app. You can get by without a task killer, its a personal choice at the end of the day. Some people want to use one, others dont. However what the articles are trying to do is dispel myths about improved battery, task killers are a must have etc etc.

The only issue I've ever had with the S2 was that the battery was draining quicker than I could charge it, turned out I had a bugged download of the FB app on my home screen and had to redownload it . If your battery is going down insanely quick make sure you use something like android assistant to instantly monitor the power useage.

Took me 3 solid hours to figure that one out!

I don't think I could be without mine now. Great phone!

The best task killer is the power button.

The best podcast app out there by far is "pocket casts"

Tunein radio app is essential.
Seesmic if you use Twitter
Last FM if you have an account
Watchdog - it alerts you when an app goes over a set CPU threshold

Here are my essentials:

Angry Birds
Chrome Beta
Dropbox
Flashlight
London Tube Status

Are you sure it was the Live Wallpaper that was flattening the battery? Live Wallpapers don't run (or at least, shouldn't run) when the screen is turned off. I'm pretty sure they don't (or shouldn't) run when another app has focus either - ie. when you're sat checking your emails or playing Angry Birds, by design there shouldn't be CPU usage dedicated to running an LW that you can't even see.

I am not sure if it was a live wallpaper draining the battery but the battery was discharging at 10-13% an hour on idle. I downloaded Android assistant and found GO Weather was using a lot of juice even though I never really used it.
Now that the live wallpaper has gone and GO Weather battery life is much extended.

The Galaxy S2 has the Swype keyboard as one of the optional keyboards. It's worth giving that a shot before paying for an app.