If your significant other is smitten by sleek, simple-to-use gadgets, we've got a few compelling Valentine's Day gift suggestions. 

Digital Cameras: Pretty as their pictures
More than an elegant red casing makes the slimline Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP8, $300, a great Valentine gift. A non-telescoping 4.6x zoom lens and illuminated control buttons sets it aside from 17 other recommended point-and-shoot digital cameras. All offer the very good image quality, large LCD viewers, short first- and next-shot delay times, and wide-angle capabilities crucial to capture cute candids and lovely landscape shots.

Choose the Canon PowerShot A1000 IS, $150, if you're on a budget; you'll still get the image stabilization that rescues images from shaky hands. The Canon EOS Rebel XSi, $550, or the Nikon D5000, $600, offer the power of a single-lens reflex camera and the ability to shoot video in a more compact package.

More: Full digital camera Ratings (available to subscribers) and free Buying Guide.

Pocket camcorders: More ways to capture romantic moments
These ultra-portable, easy-to-operate small wonders make it easier to capture romantic outings, wedding toasts, or family moments to send to far-off partners. The Pure Digital Flip Video UltraHD, $200, has a very straightforward design, with a big red button to turn the camcorder on and off. It's easy to use and has decent sound. If you're always on the go or are shooting lots of action, the Kodak Zi8, $180, includes image stabilization.  Both plug directly into a USB port to upload videos to your computer or the Web.

More: Pocket camcorder overview and model recommendations (available to subscribers).

Music players: Embrace the Touch, swoon over a Zune or go Nano?
Apple's 32GB iPod Touch, $300, lets your artfully arrange songs, movies into a perfect playlist of songs to pipe in over romantic dinners, browse the Web, or download and play games. Microsoft's 32GB Zune HD, $290 offers high-definition FM radio and lets you buy any songs that might move you via Wi-Fi or tag them for future download. Both players offer sharp touch screens that make finding content a snap. For athletic couples, the smaller iPod Nano ($180 for 16GB), is ideal for workouts or outdoor dates. Its built-in camcorder, FM radio, and ability to pause and rewind live broadcasts have won enough hearts to make it one of the most popular players on the market.

More: Full music player Ratings (available to subscribers) and free Buying Guide.

For even more Valentine's Day gift ideas from the Consumer Reports' editors, check here.

iRiver Story
Source: iRiver

Among the e-book readers scheduled to hit the market soon in the US are at least two–the Interead Cooler, $249, and the iRiver Story, $279–that cost about the same as the Kindle (which costs $259), and sport a screen of the same size (6 inches) and technology (E Ink). But based on trying out these two devices at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, only the Cooler offers a compelling reason to consider it over Amazon’s dominant reader, or possibly over other upcoming e-book readers, including upcoming multipurpose tablets such as the Apple iPad.

That distinction: The Cooler is very light, an enormous advantage for a product category that’s all about mobility. At about 6.3 ounces, it’s about 40 percent lighter than the Kindle and nearly half the weight of the Barnes and Noble Nook.

Interead Cooler
Source: Interead

I wasn’t able to reliably judge the speed of its page turns or its ergonomics. But I did like its unique control for font size. Where most e-book readers require several button presses to make type bigger or smaller, the Cooler allows it in one push of a small rocker control on its side; the control resembles the volume control on an iPhone. Another nice, quirky touch: The Cooler comes preloaded with Sudoku games. And where almost all readers are white or black, it comes in eight different colors, including two shades of pink.

To me, the iRiver device lacked any such elan. And its page-turning performance was unimpressive, proving to be slower than the Kindle and some other competitors I saw at CES. Reps for iRiver, a company known primarily for its MP3 players, talked about an interesting vision of having the device become a platform for social networking, with e-book bookworms sharing insights about their reading via their Storys. But that’s seemingly only a vision for now, a possibility for the 2.0 version of the device.

The Cooler and Story share one key disadvantage. Both must be connected to a computer to get content; there’s no 3G connection for content–as with the Kindle, Nook, Sony Daily Reader, and other devices–though versions of both that have at least Wi-Fi capability are promised.

We expect to have further coverage of e-book readers, likely including these models, as they hit the market over the months to come.

–Paul Reynolds

Today's electronics deals, courtesy of The Consumerist:

• HP Home & Home Office Store: HP G62t 15.6-inch Core i5 Laptop $704.99+ $29.00 shipping
• Dell Home: Dell Inspiron Mini 10v 10-inch Laptop $249 + free shipping
• Staples : Acer Laptop Dual-Core 1.6Ghz w/ 3GB Memory + 320GB Drive for $379.98 w/ Free Shipping
• BuyDig.com: Samsung LN32B460 32-inch 720p LCD HDTV $429 + free shipping
• Dell : Sharp 52" LCD 1080p HDTV for $999 w/ Free Shipping
• Buy.com: ViewSonic VFD810-50 8in LED-Backlit Digital Photo Frame (800×600) $39.99
• Tiger Direct: HP BD-2000 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player $118
• Walmart: Magnavox Blu-ray Player $68

• Sears: Sony HDR-HC5 MiniDV HD Handycam Camcorder for $200 + $6 s&h
• Newegg: Acer P235Hbmid 23-inch Multi-Input LCD Flat Panel Monitor $180 Shipped
• Logitech: Logitech Roundup: Logitech G9 Laser Mouse for $40 + $6 s&h, more
• Buy.com : PlayStation 3 Infinite Play Wireless Controller for $17.99 + $4.68 Shipping
• Newegg : Star Trek Online PC Game + Bonus Star Trek T-Shirt for $44.99 w/ Free Shipping
• Walmart: Madden NFL 11 Game (Xbox 360, PS3) + $20 Walmart Gift Card $59.96 (Wii $49.96)

Related: TV Ratings and buying tips; Computer Ratings and buying tips; DVD & Blu-ray player Ratings and buying tips; Video game console buying tips and video: "Choosing a video game system"; Camcorder Ratings and buying tips; Digital picture frame Ratings and buying tips.

Neither Consumer Reports nor The Consumerist receive anything in
exchange for featuring these deals; the posts are intended to be purely
informational. These deals are often fleeting, with prices changing or
products becoming unavailable as the day progresses.

These posts are not an endorsement of the featured products or
the Web sites that sell them—though some of the sites may be included,
and recommended, in our Ratings of retailers for computers and other major electronics (both available to subscribers). Price shouldn't be your only criterion. Be wary of lower-priced deals that seem too good to be true, and check return policies for restocking fees and other gotchas.

For general buying advice for many of the products on sale above, check out our free Buying Guides.

Combing through hundreds of blog posts and news articles daily, Dirk Klingner, our technology-trend watcher, sifts through the noise to bring you the tech news most important to consumers. If you have a tip on a story you want to share, leave a comment below.

Weather Channel distributes Android app via on-screen QR code (Engadget Mobile)

Google's been doing some pretty slick stuff with QR codes lately, and now it looks like The Weather Channel's getting in on the fun — it's running a little on-screen graphic prompting Android owners to download their app by scanning their TV screens.

Focusing on the Lens Inside Phones (Wall Street Journal)

…The closely held company, LensVector Inc., says it has developed tiny transparent components for autofocus systems that replace larger mechanical parts. With sturdier and less-expensive components, autofocus could change from an option found only on certain handsets into a standard feature of mainstream phones, the company said.

Kwedit Launches: The First Completely Unreliable Payment Network (TechCrunch)

Something tells me Kwedit, which launches today, is going to be a hit. It’s a new payment service that absolutely doesn’t guarantee payments. In fact, its unreliability is what makes it so attractive to social game publishers and other people selling virtual goods.

Twitter Launches Hovercraft…I Mean Hovercards (ReadWriteWeb)

…the hovercard is like a business card that will appear whenever you mouseover another user's name or avatar.

Rebecca’s War Dog of the Week (The Best Defense)

…Presently, the United States has 28,000 dogs enrolled in military service, "the largest canine force in the world." Where there is a U.S. troop surge to Afghanistan, so too is there a dog surge. As Nick Guidas, the manager of the K-9 unit in Afghanistan, told AP earlier this week, he expects to have as many as 219 dogs by July.

Lighter Side: A Sculpture That Perpetually Sells Itself On eBay (Laughing Squid)

Artist Caleb Larsen has created an art sculpture which, when connected to the Internet, perpetually attempts to sell itself on eBay.

The Star Walk app, as displayed on the
iPad at their press event last month.
Photo: Jeff Fox

As is normal with a potential game-changing device Apple’s iPad has attracted a range of opinions, including its share of bashing in the blogosphere.

One analysis of negative comments about the iPad on Twitter found that more than a quarter criticized the iPad for being a big iPhone or iPod Touch, lacking in the features and capabilities you might expect from a pint-sized computer.

When I tried out the iPad at its launch last week, I was certainly disappointed at the lack of both multitasking and a webcam, capabilities you’d expect from any other portable computer. But having actually held and operated an iPad, I was more impressed by its potential than its shortcomings.

In fact, since I tried out the iPad, I’ve come to the conclusion that its being a big iPhone (albeit one that lacks an actual phone) is actually a good thing. Here’s why:

The iPad’s bigger display offers a host of new possibilities. For example, I used an astronomy app called Star Walk last week on the iPad, and its live representation of stars, planets, and constellations was suited to the 9.7-inch display in a way that I doubt would be the case on the 3.5-inch screen of the iPhone. It’s not much of a stretch to go from Star Walk to, say, an interactive tour guide designed expressly for the iPad that displays informative photos and video of any historic site you happen to be visiting. That app would be too much for a smart phone, and of little interest to me if I had to lug around a traditional laptop or netbook to see it.

A larger display, I found, is also a much better playing field for multi-touch gestures. I’ve often felt cramped when my fingers were limited to the confines of a 3.5-inch display. And some gestures that make no sense on an iPhone or iPod Touch are quite useful on the iPad’s display, such as a new gesture I saw demonstrated at the iPad launch: Touching an icon with one finger, then tapping other icons to group them into a pile

So an “oversized iPhone” (whether Apple’s or someone else’s, like Google’s reported device is something I’m interested in owning and using. And that’s despite the fact that it may add yet another data subscription to my life, because I still plan to carry (and pay data charges for) a smart phone in my pocket to check e-mail, even though I could do that on the bulkier tablet.

And I don’t expect to forgo my laptop for a tablet on, say, business trips, because I wouldn't expect to do heavy work on such a device.

I know that not everyone will feel that the iPad, or other tablets, merit a place in their lives, especially given their cost. Weigh in below with your perspective on the potential of the iPad and other new devices that are neither phone nor computer.

—Jeff Fox