Is there a way to tell if u have updates for applications or even the phone itself? Right now I am getting update notifications for apps only when I download new ones. I appreciate any ideas.
The market will work well for anything that's installed from the market.
If you swap rom's (like I did with my Hero) you'll probably start using something like Astro or Titanium backup to backup your apk's locally...
App Brain will help you find updates to your apps from the market, as well as gives you an alternative to re-install your applications without having to remember everything you had installed...