I'll have to read up on auto bitcoind, I've seen it referenced a few times. As for the import thing, could armory be told to "look" for changes and import at x intervals ?
I'm not sure what you mean by that. You will get full up-to-date transaction history for any private key you import into an Armory wallet, past, present and future. If you create new private keys in a wallet from another client, you will have to import these new keys into your Armory wallet to get their history.