I adore my Sony e-book reader, and it’s perfect for novels. But one of its big drawbacks is its size, which makes it difficult for reading technical books or any document that benefits from a large format. That’s why I was happy to see the Plastic Logic reader in production.

What the Plastic Logic reader does:

From ebooks to newspapers, magazines and blogs, the Plastic Logic reader is designed to support a range of open document formats. These include such standard and widely available formats as PDF, ePub and Microsoft Office document types.

I can’t wait until it’s ready for prime time. Meanwhile, watch the preview:

Preparedness is never easy, which is why so many of us get caught out when something goes wrong. With technology, the tiniest thing can misfire and blast your plans to oblivion.

I was happy to come across blogger Rob Jackson’s post Confessions of a Live Blog Failure, where he talks about trying to report an event on his own, live, and it didn’t go as he expected.

“I was trying to keep up on the content with my keyboard, snap still pics with my digital camera and capture footage with my handycam. CAPTURING it all was too much for one person let alone reporting it back to the all the readers/visitors,” he says.

Best of all, he spells out his mistakes so you can learn. A quick run-down of his recommendations for trying to use social media during an event:

• Get a back-up Internet connection, in case the local connection fails
• Bring back-up battery and cables
• Test the system

I feel for the guy, but I’m glad he decided to share his tragic experience for the greater good.

In the giving spirit of the season, our Friendly Web Tools blog is going to close out the year with a wealth of tips for you. From now until 2009 (we’re taking a break on the 25th and 26th), we’re going to give you our top five every day, from design tips to gadgets.

Today, as it’s Gadget Monday, I’m giving you our top five gadgets. As with all gadgets featured on Gadget Monday, these meet our criteria of affordability, ease of use, practicality and ingenuity, all factors we think are vital for charitable organizations.

So, with the end of the year nigh, our top five gadgets:

1. XO. We adore the cheap, durable, energy efficient and inspired green and white laptop computer from the One Laptop Per Child project. We love it because it’s wonderfully designed and it can help change the life of children all around the world. It’s cute, rugged and has built-in wireless. In fact, it’s so great, you might want to buy one for a kid somewhere else who needs one and then buy one for a kid closer to home.

2. E-book reader. It’s a weird experience going from a book to a digital square, but once you cotton on to an e-book reader, you’ll never look back. Even if you don’t want to pay for the expensive books, you’ll still love either the Sony E-Book Reader or Amazon’s Kindle for free and paperless newspapers, magazines and a large backlog of public domain books.

3. Solio Charger. We first saw this when we volunteered at our local public radio station – they were giving it away as a premium for pledging. I’ve loved it ever since. The Solio “stores power from the sun or socket; freeing you to recharge your mobile phone, iPod and other handheld devices anywhere, anytime. A fully charged Solio will recharge the average phone up to two times, or give you up to 15 hours of MP3 music.” Green and great.

4. Zi6. We’ve reviewed the Flip Video digital recorder, but we really like Kodak’s Zi6. It’s a cheap HD (I’ve seen it for barely over $100 online) camcorder for quickly capturing video and letting you upload it to YouTube easily. Fast and fun.

5. Optoma’s Pico Projector. Earlier this year, we featured the 3M pocket projector, a gadget that makes taking PowerPoint or video presentations on the road much easier. We also like Optoma’s Pico, which is bright, incredibly portable and just shy of $400.

Last week I gave a presentation on how to do fast and easy podcasts, and several people were curious about different methods of capturing voice. If you have a computer with a microphone, recording is easy, but it’s a little hard to walk around with even a laptop making recordings.

A digital recorder is the answer. I recommend one that does double duty recording audio and also functions as an MP3 player. That way, you can load up your favorite podcasts, and also create them while you’re out walking.

A few good options:

• Creative Zen does it all, music, photos, video and radio. I picked one up a couple years ago for $30 at Circuit City, and am still using it.
• >Olympus VN-900 Handheld Digital Voice Recorder is more for voice recording, but often sells for less than $30 on Amazon.
• >8 GB MP4/MP3 Player with FM Radio, Camera, Voice Recorder, USB Portable, and 2.8-inch Touchscreen Looks exactly like the iTouch, but sells for around $66 on Amazon.

This week kicks off a special presidential edition of Talance’s Friendly Web Tools Blog, celebrating the first time in eight years that the White House has participated in the technological revolution that’s been exploding everywhere else on the planet. We love how the President-elect has used technology to reach so many people, raise so many funds and create a powerful, galvanizing campaign. They’re all techniques that people at nonprofits should be studying and copying whenever possible – no matter who you voted for.

If you love gadgets, you’ll have to love how many Barack Obama has. To wit:

• He’s a BlackBerry addict - did you see him giving speeches with it clipped to his belt?
• He uses a Mac notebook
• Michelle Obama said he wouldn’t leave home without his webcam to stay connected with his family
• He uses a Zune at the gym (or at least did one time)
• He plans to have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office. This makes him the first president to have Internet access in the famous room. Sadly, however, he may have to give up e-mail, because they can be hacked into and subpoenaed.

Travel was supposed to become a tiny bit less aggravating. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) approved use of carry-on bag designs that allow pass-through of laptops without removing them for X-ray inspection. Plenty of purveyors capitalized on the opportunity for selling new bags, including Belkin, Mobile Edge and Targus, among many others.

The reality of traveling through security checkpoint is different. You still frequently have to remove your laptop from your bag - along with everything else - to prove you’re not a bomb-toting terrorist. And the most troublesome set-back I’ve experienced is cables.

I travel with a huge rats nest of them: laptop cable, mouse with its cable, iPod cable, cell phone charger cable - those are just a few that I can think of right now. The actual pile that amasses before I leave is much larger.

This mass of unruly cables stuffed into my laptop bag is the real red flag, and the reason I’m asked to step aside and pull everything out of my case. Or, at least it was until I decided to wind all the cords up into one pile, stick them into a big zip-topped bag and carry those separately.

The result: security workers picked up my big zip-topped bag, turned it over and waved me through.

Move over pens, it’s time to make room for a pocket projector. Yes, projector, not protector. The 3M Pocket Projector is a dinky $359 projector that takes the place of hyper-expensive LCD projectors that can run in the thousands.

Plug the projector into your laptop to access DVDs, presentations and photos, and project them onto your desk or wall or another blank white space. It’s definitely limited to a smaller room application in bright light - it displays around a foot across - but in a dark room, you can use it to project a much larger image on the wall.

Perfect tool for taking on the road for seminars or doing quick displays.

Phone bills can quickly carve a big chunk out of a budget, thanks to base rates and unending fees, so ditching the land line is an attractive idea. That’s one of the reasons I like Skype so much (see these postings I’ve tagged with “Skype”). MagicJack is another gizmo that makes nearly free phone calls a possibility.

This little doohickey is about the size of a pack of gum that plugs into your computer and household phone and offers unlimited local and long distance for the US and Canada. It’s $40, which is easily earned back within the first month of use. It also offers free directory assistance, call waiting, voice mail and caller ID.

Installation is easy: you plug in both ends and let the software automatically load itself onto your computer. Register and receive unique phone number (or port your existing numbers), and you can start to begin making calls.

I like my keyboard, but it does have its drawbacks. It’s incredibly long, snaking down my desk with extra keypads and features and loads of shortcut buttons that I rarely, if ever, use.

That’s why Brando’s little keyboard, called the USB 2.4Ghz RF Wireless Multimedia Tiny Keyboard, is so appealing. It’s called “tiny,” and small it is, but still suitable for casual typing. It easily lays in your two cupped hands and can be pulled all around the room because it has no cords to restrict it. No wires to get tangled in your coffee cup.

It might not be the best tool for writing a full novel, but it’s small, portable and handy for taking in and out of meetings or workshops and costs less than $50.

Yesterday I stressed the importance of scrubbing clean your computer before donating it (or putting it in the trash). Charitable organizations generally don’t remove the data from your computer when you donate it. Consequently, they pass all your private electronic data on to the next owner.

Here’s what to do in order to prep it for donation:

1. Copy everything on your old computer to your new one. Be thorough, you never know what you’ll regret having trashed. Try the SimpleTech Signature Mini, which I wrote about earlier.
2. Remove e-mail contacts and messages. People often remember to delete bank information, but forget these things.
3. Clear out your browser bookmarks/favorites. You might have sensitive information marked for easy retrieval that you forgot was in there.
4. Likewise, clear out your Internet cache. Here’s how to do it in Internet Explorer, and a nice little video on how to do it in Firefox.
5. Remember to delete your photos, journal entries or any stored frequent flyer or credit card information.
6. Delete all your documents, including what’s in the recycle bin or trash folder.

Now that you’re done with that, realize that you’re not done. What happens when you delete a file is that it’s not really gone. It’s just made available to write over. It’s like an Etch-a-Sketch. When you’re done making concentric circles (the only thing I was ever able to do), you don’t throw it away. You shake it so you can draw another picture.

So first step is to call your computer manufacturer’s technical department and ask how they recommend to your personal files. They built it, they should have ideas on how to delete it.

Depending on what they tell you, you might be asked to pick up some disk-cleaning software. There are many free versions available; just type “file shredder” into your favorite search engine and pick one. If you want to spend money, try Symantec’s Norton SystemWorks for about $50. But pick something, and make sure you clean it up.