OK, now THIS is weird. Even for me.

Remember a few days ago I reported that a Barnes and Noble rep at CTIA had announced that their second generation Ebook Reader by Plastic Logic would be out in Spring 2010 and have a color screen?

Well, Plastic Logic has finally made an announcement about that upcoming color device…and declared it is all a big fat LIE.

…

Huh?

Read on to learn more, or learn less, as the case may be.

Here is what Plastic Logic has stated today about what I am calling “Barnes and Noblegate”

“The video report is inaccurate and the individual (who was apparently filmed while attending a trade show was not an authorized Barnes & Noble spokesperson) was misinformed.

We are excited to have Barnes & Noble powering the Plastic Logic e-commerce store. While colour is on Plastic Logic’s roadmap, it is not on the map for the Spring of 2010. Plastic Logic has said for quite some time it is working on colour, but not for a product in the coming year.”

OUCH! Apparently filmed? Oh no, he was filmed alright. Here, watch Daniel Jorrenson (if that is his real name) doing his Barnes and Noble employee impression again…

He’s got the shirt, he’s got the silly trade show neck lanyard, he’s got the goofy, self important grin…This guy had me at “and I’m with Barnes and Noble.”

OK, lets assume that Plastic Logic is right, and this man is a fraud….why? Is he an Amazon flak on a sabotage mission? Has his unattainable fantasy always been to work for a book store? Did he want to impress the interviewer with the cute voice by giving her a false scoop, pretending to be some really important guy who knows about Ebook Readers? Think he got her phone number? Maybe he has a dark and unwholesome need to talk to women about Ebook Readers, ever since he was abandoned in a B Daltons as a child.

Forget why…where did he get the damn SHIRT? Was some poor Barnes and Noble wageslave lying tied up and shirtless in the men’s room at CTIA?

The interviewer with the cute voice by the way is named Jenn and she writes for Mashable as well as her own blog (which is a good read by the way). As you can see by her own Posterous post HERE she was pretty damn excited about the interview. I don’t don’t think she was part of this cruel fraud, if cruel fraud it was.

I have a feeling Danny-boy here either got carried away or really didn’t know enough about what he was saying. When Jenn asked him what made this reader better then the competitors (that is, the Kindle) he either had to say “Well…nothing really…” or make something up fast. He could have said it beams the books directly into your brain, could have said the device levitates, could have said that reading with it over a long period of time will cure male pattern baldness and/or various other male pattern dysfunctions….but no, all he came up with was “It’s got Color!”

Of course why Plastic Logic couldn’t just contact B&N privately and have them quietly retract the statement, or say it may not be ready by Spring exactly, but it is coming (which is what Plastic Logic DOES claim), I don’t know. What I do know is I would LOVE to be able to sit in on the next Barnes and Noble/Plastic Logic partners meeting.

…and this guy owes Jenn an apology.

(Source: PC Pro)

Zealot (469 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).