Kindle 2 Coming Feb. 9th?

It's a hush-hush affair, but an invitation to a press conference Feb. 9th in New York City just shouts Kindle 2, as the press conference is being held at The Morgan Library & Museum. Furthermore, Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO will be in attendance.

Additionally, the Kindle listing on Amazon.com's website now says a delay of 4 - 6 weeks, whereas it had previously been 11 - 13 (AKA, never). It makes sense to intuit from that long, long out of stock cycle that Amazon.com had sold out of Kindle 1.0 and simply wanted to wait to ship Kindle 2.0.

However, making buyers wait for months is probably not a good idea. On the other hand, after Oprah Winfrey pegged the Kindle as her new favorite gadget in late October, the Kindle received the benefit of the "Oprah effect."

There's always the chance this is some other big announcement, but given Kindle 1.0 was launched in Nov. 2007, it's definitely time for a Kindle refresh.