iPhone users tend to get pretty excited when they see a number alert
right over the App Store icon. This means that an app or two has been
updated and is available for downloading. This week we've seen seen
numerous great updates from some apps that we love.

Here are the top 4 app updates that brought great features and more
stability to our iPhones this week.

eBay
Initially, the eBay application didn't provide very much for us to do.
You could see information on the items you were selling, bidding on,
and place a new bid. You could also search for new auctions, but that
was about as good as it got. With the latest update eBay has added the
option for advanced search refinement to provide users with better
search results, along with an auto-complete feature with suggestions
from the most popular related queries. Sellers can now see the number
of users watching their auction. eBay has also added support for
international search and language support. The app's responsiveness
and speed has also improved significantly. The improvements in this
update come closer to eliminating the need for iPhone users to head
directly to the eBay site.

Pandora
Pandora has released v1.2 of their iPhone app and we're more than
impressed. We were in love with the app from the beginning, but there
were some kinks and quirks that needed to be worked out. Some of these
issues have been addressed in v1.2. For example, streaming quality and
connection over not only the 3G network, but also the weaker EDGE has
improved significantly. Pandora has graciously provided the option for
high quality streaming over 3G. Now users don't have to suffer EDGE
quality when on the 3G network. Users can now view past bookmarked
songs and create stations from them, share them, buy them in iTunes,
or delete them. Overall station editing has improved with the option
to include stations in your Quickmix. All in all, the options for this
great app have been given a significant boost in the latest update.

Palringo
Palringo is one of the most stable multi-IM apps available in the App
Store. The latest update for Palringo provides a significant list of
new features and stability fixes. New features include:
Unread private messages now saved on exit
Progress bars for sending/receiving voice/photos
Reduced network usage (now using compression so that logging in over
EDGE/GPRS/3G should be noticeably faster)
Support for Y! Japan
Support for SSL/TLS on XMPP (Jabber/GTalk)
Spam filtering for non-Palringo services such as MSN
Ability to disable predictive input
Ability to set the default status to Away/Busy when leaving Palringo
(while the server keeps you connected)
Remembers your status on all services (MSN/Yahoo/etc.)
Added russian translation
The update also includes numerous fixes for adding GTalk and XMPP
accounts, international character support, more accurate French and
Polish translations, sending high-resolution photos, and the
"invisible" button now works. We highly recommend trying out this app
if you haven't already.

Snapture
Snapture is only available for jailbroken iPhones, but is one of the
most fantastic camera apps available. Snapture provides more options
for taking photos with your iPhone and has replaced the default camera
app for many iPhone users. The latest update for Snapture includes
support for firmware 2.1 along with three new color filters modes:
red, blue, and green. Snapture is available in Cydia, though not
Installer. You can download the free, but basic version of Snapture or
you can pony up $7.99 to get the premium version and the newest beta
features first.