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 our picks of the top 4 app updates that brought great features and more stability to our iPhones this week.
]]> eBayInitially, 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.
QuickView from Snapture Labs on Vimeo.