The Kindle — or, as it might be known to some: the weird book screen thing Oprah showed off in October — has basically been sold out since Oprah showed it off. But rather than chalking it up to a major failure on Amazon’s (which makes the device) part, it’s been pretty evident for a while that a new version was coming shortly. February 9 looks to be the date.

Invites have started going out for a special event being held in New York City, to be hosted by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos. Little, if no detail is being given out by Amazon as to what exactly will be talked about at the “Jeffnote” (you know, like a Stevenote minus one Steve Jobs), but it’s not hard to put one and one together. The Bits blog did, and came up with the Kindle 2.

The device, which may or may not look like images published by the blog The Boy Genius Report nearly a year ago, will undoubtedly be an improvement over the current Kindle, which a lot of people seem to love in theory, but not so much in practice. But there’s a larger question for such a device going forward: Are people really going to want to carry around a fairly large electronic device when they already have several other devices on them?

via Kindle 2: Should you stop buying all those iPhone eBooks? » VentureBeat.