TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Instapaper, our favorite read-it-later app for the iPhone and iPad, has just gotten a huge update to version 4.0. This is the first major update since the developer, Marco Arment, started using his own app on the iPad. And man does it show. Instead of being little more than a scaled up iPhone app, the iPad version of Instapaper has been completely redesigned.

If you have never used Instapaper, it’s a combined web service and app. When you find an article on the web that you want to save, click the “read later” bookmarklet in your browser and it is saved.

If you still have space on your TV for yet another set-top box, Roku would like you to consider its new Roku LT, a little purple video and audio streamer which will sell for just $50.

The LT has everything you’d expect from a modern-day box: Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon and Pandora streaming are joined by “more than 300 channels.” Signals come in via Wi-Fi, and out in the form of 720p hi-def video.

The most famous TV-B-Gone prank must surely be the one executed by Gizmodo at 2008’s CES. When MAKE magazine gave a bunch of gadget bloggers a widget that would cycle through IR codes and quickly shut off any TV in the vicinity, it must have known what would happen. The result: much bluster and moral outrage from people with no sense of humor, and the banning of Gizmodo writer Richard Blakeley from subsequent CES shows.

Instagram has relented, and another update to the Lomo-tastic photo-sharing app fixes many of the awful tweaks forced upon users in v2.0. While fans of the high-contrast B&W “Gotham” filter will be disappointed, the folks at Instagram have fixed almost everything else with v2.0.1.

First, though, there are some new features. These pertain to location, and geotagging. If you use a photo already in your iPhone’s camera roll, the location stamp of the original photo will be preserved, and Instagram will suggest nearby places based on that location.

Second, if you geotag a photo taken with Instagram, and have the app set to save photos to your camera roll, the resulting saved file will be tagged.

JawBone has issued yet another update for its little speaker with big sound, the JamBox. If you have been following along, you’ll know that the recent 2.0 software update added LiveAudio, a sound-processing based implementation of binaural audio which stretches out sound and makes it appear to surround you.

Used with an iPad playing Dolby surround movies, it’s pretty awesome.

This 2.1 update adds Sound Clarity which JawBone says “delivers clearer, distortion-free sound” when LiveAudio is switched off. Apparently there have been complaints on the Internet that v2.0 made some speakers sound cold and fuzzy, and generally worse.

In the U.S, the only people to ride railway trains are hobos, and tree-hugging hippies taking the Caltrain into San Francisco to work their tech-industry jobs. In the UK, trains are a much used (and outrageously overpriced) way to get around.

The new Train Tickets app from CrossCountry Trains won’t help with the prices, but it makes finding routes and buying tickets a lot easier. You can search on any train journey in the UK and view timetables.

You know how you check what’s going on behind you when you ride a bike? You look over (or under) your shoulder, that’s how. And for the stiff-necked, a cheap mirror will do the job just fine. What you don’t need is a $180 camera and LCD screen.

It looks like somebody forgot to tell the Owl 360 people that nobody needs their product, so they went ahead and made it anyway. The camera mounts on your seat post, and is surrounded by LEDs which come on in the dark to save you buying a separate bicycle lamp, and the 3.5-inch LCD screen attaches to your handlebars so you can shoot a glance straight down instead of backwards, as God intended when he invented the bike.

Get ready. I’m about to blow your mind with something so obvious, so clearly right, that I’m amazed you never thought of it before: Etch-a-Sketch on a Kindle.

That’s right. There’s an app — called Doodle — which turns the e-ink on the Kindle into the same hard-to-control lines you find on the frustrating magnetic drawing toy.

AT&T announced today that it is getting three new Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) handsets sometime this fall.

The three smartphones, the Samsung Focus S, Samsung Focus Flash and HTC Titan, are 4G. The Focus S features a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display and a 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor. The Focus Flash has the same chip but a more pocket-friendly 3.7-inch Super AMOLED screen.

“Enjoy three hundred and sixty degrees of excitement, right from your hand.”

That’s the promise of the AppSpeed Monster Truck, which — apparently unlike any other RC vehicle — is controlled by a handheld remote. In this case, the remote is an iPhone running the free AppSpeed app.