Hasta La Gadget!

As you’d expect, the Amazon Kindle 2 announcement is all over the Web today. In other e-reader news, though, Plastic Logic, the company behind the very promising device we first heard about last year–it’s larger than others at 8.5 by 11 inches, very thin and lightweight, and even flexible–has announced content partners for its first iteration as a business reader.

So far, at least, the Plasic Logic Reader will offer content from Ingram Digital and FictionWise for e-books, LibreDigital for e-newspapers, Zinio for e-magazines, the Financial Times, and USA Today.

The company announced that its Reader will support the PDF format; one big complaint about the Kindle is that it doesn’t support PDF files without conversion.

YouTube is hosting numerous videos showing the Plastic Logic Reader in action. I’ll embed one after the jump.

Amazon isn’t really much when it comes to mastering suspense. For about a week and a half we’ve all been assuming that today will be the day the online retailer launches the second iteration of its popular Kindle e-book reader, a fact that The Wall Street Journal confidently confirmed, earlier this morning.

What is news, however (aside from said seeming confidence), is who they’ve chosen to help launch the device–an actual master of suspense, Stephen King. The absurdly prolific author was tapped to pen a new work which will be available exclusively on the device (a Kin-sclusive?).

The work (which King no doubt will pen on his way to the event) will be published by Scribner, appearing on the device first, possibly followed by a print version at some point. According to The Journal, the latest book the Cell author will feature a “Kindle-like device.”

I know this might surprise some of you, but there are women in the world who like things done a certain way–in a nerdy way, to be more specific. For example, they prefer their marriage proposals to arrive via a video game, or at least tangentially related to video games. That’s right, geeks aren’t just guys–there are lady geeks, too.

So what do you give your geeky girlfriend for Valentine’s Day? Check out Gearlog’s gifts that only a truly geekified gal will appreciate. And make sure to check back for Part Two of our geeky Valentine’s Roundup!

The iBuzz (above)
Treat your love to some pleasure–set to the sound stylings of Barry White or Al Green, of course. Plug your MP3 player into the iBuzz Two, and the toy delivers music-activated vibrations with four pulsing patterns and 11 vibrating speeds. You can plug the two provided bullets into the iBuzz Two, or you can plug in any sex toy that has a mini-jack plug. It’s £19.99 (about $30 in the US).

More after the jump.

It’s been more than a year since PCMag.com first tested the magicJack, a clever VoIP device that lets you make very cheap phone calls using your PC. We’ve now retested magicJack in the Labs, and it works–most of the time. If something goes wrong, however, you are pretty much on your own. Just type “magic jack complaints” into Google and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve offered upmy take on the magicJack, but I want to know what Gearlog’s readers think.

How many of you have tried magicJack? And how much technical support can you reasonably expect when you buy a $40 USB dongle and hand over just $20 a year for unlimited phone service?

Love it? Hate it? Leave a comment below.

Pleo, the adorable robotic dinosaur from Ugobe and the mind of Caleb Chung, is struggling to avoid Jurassic-like extinction.

As we noted late last year, Ugobe’s CEO Bob Christopher stepped down and the company moved its operation to Idaho (Pleo was on my “Maybe Buy” list for these and other reasons). Now Wired’s Gadget Lab reports that the company’s situation may have gone from bad to worse. Liz Gasper, who took over for Christopher and spent most of her time cutting costs, left the company in January.

Meanwhile, fund-raising efforts stalled and the entire Ugobe board resigned. Co-founder Caleb Chung is now back in charge, but he didn’t speak to Wired. Company President and COO Dough Swanson painted a rosy picture for Gadget Lab, telling the blog that, while the company has just 20 employees left, it still plans on delivering a Pleo update sometime in 2009. It’s unclear if that’s another one of the company’s semi-frequent Pleo software updates or new hardware.