After a practically nonstop 20-year career working at and building  technology companies, what should Jay Adelson do with his time off?

Seriously, what should he do? He's looking for ideas.

Adelson, 39, abruptly resigned as Digg chief executive on Monday. During his five-year stint, he led the company's efforts in establishing itself as a top social news website, launching a new kind of advertising platform and acquiring WeFollow, the pet project of Kevin Rose -- Digg's founder  and his successor as CEO. Adelson is also chairman of the online video network Revision3.

Before that, he was the founder of Equinix, a public networking company that houses data centers responsible for keeping major parts of the Internet running.

Now, for the most part, he's free of day-to-day corporate responsibilities -- for now.

"Well, honestly I have plenty of projects to occupy myself with as you probably can imagine," Adelson wrote in an e-mail. "However, quite literally, I haven't been unemployed in my adult life."

In a blog post on Digg, Adelson wrote, "The entrepreneurial calling is strong, and I am ready to incubate some new business ideas over the next 12 months."

But he plans to take a much-needed break before then. Friends and family are pushing him to take a breather, he said.

NASA transformed a robotic plane that's typically used by the U.S. military to uncover nests of insurgents into a scientific tool capable of collecting atmospheric information over the Pacific and Arctic oceans.

On April 7, NASA used the unmanned spy plane, called the Global Hawk, on the first of five flights it has scheduled this month to study air quality.

Instead of the high-resolution cameras and heat-seeking sensors the plane is typically carries when used in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Global Hawk was outfitted with a series of instruments capable of measuring and sampling greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting substances, and aerosols.

NASA’s mission, a joint project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has been dubbed Global Hawk Pacific, or GloPac.

The Global Hawk took off and landed at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert without the need of a pilot's hand. Instead, NASA pilots simply designed a flight path for the plane to follow and sent it on its way.

According to NASA, it flew more than 14 hours along a flight path that took it 4,500 nautical miles -- just south of Alaska's Kodiak Island.

Built by Northrop Grumman Corp. in its manufacturing facilities in Palmdale, the Global Hawk flies high above the clouds at 60,000 feet -- almost twice as high as a commercial airliner. The plane has a flight range of 11,000 nautical miles, or half the circumference of Earth.

The captured data were relayed from the Global Hawk's onboard computers to a ground control station located at Dryden via satellite link.

Because of its range and endurance, the Global Hawk was ideal to capture the much-needed information, said Paul Newman, co-mission scientist for GloPac and an atmospheric scientist, in a statement.

“No other science platform provides the range and time to sample rapidly evolving atmospheric phenomena,” Newman said. “This mission is our first opportunity to demonstrate the unique capabilities of this plane, while gathering atmospheric data in a region that is poorly sampled."

-- W.J. Hennigan

Google Earth has helped paleoanthropologists discover a human species that pre-dated our "genus Homo" ancestors, the search giant announced Thursday.

According to Google, professor Lee Berger at the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg used Google Earth over the last two years to locate more than 500 previously undiscovered "caves and fossil sites" around the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa.

Based on Berger's findings, scientists searched the newly discovered sites and, much to their surprise, discovered a new human species.

Dubbed "Australopithecus sediba," the species "was an upright walker that shared many physical traits with the earliest known species of the genus Homo." Although their findings are preliminary, scientists believe that the species could provide valuable insight into human ancestry.

-- Don Reisinger

twitter.com/donreisinger

Photo: Australopithecus sediba fossils. Credit: Google

Internet advertising revenue was down in 2009, but record-breaking spending during the fourth quarter indicates advertisers are slowly regaining their willingness to invest in online ads, a new study has found.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, overall ad revenue in 2009 hit $22.7 billion, down 3.4% from 2008.

But it was the peppy fourth quarter of 2009 that gave the researchers some hope for 2010. During that period, advertisers spent $6.3 billion on Web advertising, a 2.6% increase over the same period in 2008. The figure set an all-time record for the most ad revenue in a single quarter. Industry analysts and publishers hope that means the worst of the ad slump is over.

The IAB also looked at different sectors of the online-advertising market. In 2009, 47% of all ad revenue was generated through search services. It was followed by display advertising, which was 35% of total revenue. Advertising in classifieds and e-mail captured 10% and 1% of ad revenue, respectively.

-- Don Reisinger

twitter.com/donreisinger

Image: A view of where advertisers spent their cash in 2009. Credit: Interactive Advertising Bureau

Google is an expert in helping you find a lot of things. Now it wants to help those contemplating suicide to get help rather than click on Wikipedia's exhaustive entry on Suicide Methods. 

When users type some suicide-related queries, Google guides them to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The search giant implemented the feature last week. It automatically displays a bright red, eye-catching telephone icon and the phone number for a suicide hotline atop search results for some queries that contain the word "suicide." 

"When somebody is in suicidal crisis or emotional distress, they may benefit from calling a suicide prevention hotline," a Google spokesman wrote in an e-mail. "This was created to help users quickly obtain useful information during a difficult time."

This is a departure for Google, which prides itself on delivering the exact results users search for. Google added a similar widget for searches containing "poison control." Accompanied by the green, tongue-extended picture of Mr. Yuk (remember him?), those results pages display the American Assn. of Poison Control Centers phone number.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

AOL confirmed Tuesday what everyone has known for a long time: R.I.P Bebo.

Two years after paying $850 million for the social networking service, Bebo is essentially worthless and AOL plans to sell it or close it. AOL expects to decide Bebo’s fate by the end of May.

“We are currently evaluating strategic alternatives with respect to Bebo, which could include a sale or shutdown of Bebo in 2010,” Jon Brod, head of AOL Ventures, local and mapping, said in a memo to AOL employees. “As we evaluate our portfolio of brands against our strategy, it is clear that social networking is a space with heavy competition, and where scale defines success. Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space. AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking.”

AOL gambled that it could make money in social networking in 2008 when it bought the company from husband-and-wife team Michael and Xochi Birch as part of an effort to reinvent its business and grab a greater share of online advertising.

The deal had a lot of detractors who complained that AOL overpaid for Bebo, which was popular in Europe but never quite caught on in the United States. Ultimately the service languished, falling behind competitors like Facebook. Bebo attracted 5 million unique U.S. visitors in February, down 12% from the same period a year earlier, according to comScore. Facebook boasted nearly 112 million unique U.S. visitors in February, almost double the number a year earlier.

Tech pundits began writing Bebo's obituary. Bebo president and ex-Googler Joanna Shields left AOL (and landed at Facebook, where she's running its sales and business development in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa). AOL wrote down much of the loss.

Now AOL, which parted ways with Time Warner four months ago, is reinventing itself as a purveyor of digital content under the leadership of ex-Google executive Tim Armstrong.

 -- Jessica Guynn

GoodReader, the 99-cent document and PDF reader for iPad, has become the No. 2 paid app on the iPad charts, displacing Apple's own chart-topping offerings, Numbers and Keynote.

GoodReader has sold 8,000 copies each day since the launch of the iPad -- for more than 24,000 copies total -- according to its maker Yuri Selukoff.  That figure provides a clear look into the number of apps needed to top the App Store's iPad sales chart.  (On Monday, Autodesk Inc. said it sold about 10,000 copies of its SketchBook Pro app in the iPad's first two days.)

Since Saturday, the modest e-reading app has steadily climbed its way to the top of the iPad charts, but Selukoff didn't expect that it would outrun even Apple's programs.

"That was a shock for me," he said. "That was really a shock."

Selukoff's app -- from his company Good.iWare Ltd. -- is billed as an easy way to carry around and read large PDF files. It's built to allow users to transfer documents to their iPads by plugging it in via the USB docking connector.

(This in itself is newsworthy because before the iPad, Apple did not have a standardized way for Apps to store their own files on its devices. When iPhone apps like the Stanza e-reader and even GoodReader attempted to circumvent Apple's development rules, they got in warm water.)

Selukoff said users of GoodReader could store as many large files in the app's dedicated folder as they liked, making it a useful application for toting around textbooks, technical documents and old-fashioned normal books. Selukoff believes many of his customers, including for the popular iPhone version, are students.

The success of GoodReader may hearten small-scale developers who want proof that simple apps with modest development budgets can find major success on the iPad. But Selukoff still has his eyes on the ultimate prize.

"Let's see if I can bump Apple's [Pages] applications from the No. 1 slot," he said.

-- David Sarno

The morning after former Digg Chief Executive Jay Adelson handed over the reins to founder Kevin Rose, the 33-year-old beer aficionado and online video personality has announced significant changes to the social news site's architecture.

For starters, the company plans to kill off the DiggBar, a toolbar that sits atop all outbound links from Digg.com. The framing feature was lambasted by several bloggers and search engine optimization experts after it launched a year ago.

Rose was clear about his feelings on the toolbar. "Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet," Rose wrote on the company blog Tuesday.

He went on to discuss how the tool confuses Web surfers because it masks the actual URL of the page you're on. Digg extensions that are currently available for browsers such as Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer will replace the functionality of the DiggBar, Rose wrote, and "seriously revamped versions" (emphasis his) are in the works.

Digg is also removing restrictions on which publishers can appear on the site. Over the years, a lengthy list of Web domains have been banned from Digg's catalog.

Imagine Travis F. Smith’s surprise Monday when traffic to his blog at Unvarnished.com spiked 15,000%.

Smith, 37, a Web developer from Vancouver, Canada, (and at one time the deputy editorial director of the Los Angeles Times website), soon realized why. 

A controversial new company that had taken the name Unvarnished but did not own the Unvarnished.com domain had launched, driving traffic to Smith's site at Unvarnished.com, which he has owned for nine years.

Smith quickly put up a new welcome page: 

You might be looking for a site called "Unvarnished" which isn't at this domain. Odd, I know.

If you're looking for that Unvarnished.com site, it's at getunvarnished.com.

Here, I run a blog called "Unvarnished". You can read it. It likes being read.

If you do head over to that other site, ask them why they named their site after a domain they didn't own and then got publicity from the Wall Street Journal, the Today Show, Entertainment Weekly.

In an interview, Smith said he normally gets 600 page views a day. On Monday he netted 77,000. For a while on Monday, the search term “Unvarnished,” was the second most popular on Google as people tried to check out the site that markets itself as a Yelp for reviewing people, Smith noted. 

“I have gotten a ton of comments from people who have ended up reading my blog,” Smith said. “It’s definitely a silver lining. But I don’t know if I would have gone about getting more readers this way.”

People who accidentally landed on his blog were treated to a humorous post.

To celebrate, I will be reviewing everyone on the Internet, starting today. Please leave your name if you’d like me to review you. I may not get to you right away, but unlike that other site, I do promise to say nice things about you. As long as you are, you know, nice or cute or both.

Unvarnished founder Peter Kazanjy said he chose the name because it reflects what his site is trying to achieve: deliver the unvarnished truth. He said he was confident search engines would deliver traffic to the right place.

A person familiar with the situation said Unvarnished made an offer for the domain but Smith turned it down.

Will Kazanjy try again?

“I think it certainly would be a nice thing to have, but right now with the amount of attention and crushing traffic we are getting as a result of the media coverage, it’s a lower priority,” he said.

-- Jessica Guynn

Yelp announced on Monday that it has changed its review policies and advertising techniques as criticism over its handling of user reviews continues to pile up.

In an attempt to increase the transparency of its service, Yelp said that users will now be able to see reviews of establishments that its filter algorithm removed from the site for potentially being fake or unfair. Previously, filtered reviews were permanently removed from the site unless their legitimacy could be determined.

Yelp has also decided to remove its "Favorite Review" feature. Yelp's Favorite Review was part of the company's advertising package. It displayed the top review of a respective advertiser's establishment, giving it preferential treatment over other, less-glowing reviews. Yelp removed the feature out of fear that users believed advertisers themselves were controlling content on the site.

Yelp has been facing increased criticism over the last few months over allegations that its sales team has offered potential advertisers the ability to have negative reviews of their establishments removed from the site. It has also been charged with penalizing companies that don't advertise on Yelp.

In February, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Yelp, accusing the company of an "extortion scheme" for allegedly asking companies to enter into advertising contracts to remove negative reviews on the site.

For its part, Yelp has consistently denied the claims made against it. The company has even added a page to its site attempting to dispel "myths." The company's chief executive, Jeremy Stoppleman, wrote in a blog post after the lawsuit was filed that his company has never punished non-advertisers or attempted to give advertisers an edge.

"We know this lawsuit to be without merit, we will fight it vigorously, and we are confident we will prevail," Stoppleman wrote.

Whether or not Yelp will prevail remains to be seen. But as its most recent efforts have shown, the company is taking the claims against it seriously. Now it needs to hope that its users respond favorably to those changes.

-- Don Reisinger (Follow me on Twitter @donreisinger)

Image: Yelp's new filtered-review page. Credit: Yelp

Google has responded to concerns from parents with a YouTube video that offers tips to teens on how to safely use Buzz, the social networking service that launched inside of millions of Gmail accounts.

Parents were alarmed because their children were unknowingly making themselves vulnerable on the Web by sharing private information publicly on Buzz. 

Google says kids must be 13 years old before they use Gmail or Buzz. But technology analyst Charlene Li could not recall being asked for her child’s age when she signed her up for Gmail.

Turns out Google only recently started doing that.

So the burden remains on parents to get up to speed on Buzz.

In the meantime, the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing the decade-old Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The law went into effect in 2000. It requires websites and online service providers to get parental permission before collecting or using personal information from children younger than 13.

The FTC, which reviews the law every five years, is asking a critical question: Should the definition of Internet be expanded to include mobile communications, gaming and interactive television?

This could set the stage for a new battle between online marketers and privacy advocates.

If you want to comment, go here. 

-- Jessica Guynn

Image: andinarvaez

Autodesk Inc. is one of the first app makers to release sales numbers for its iPad product.  The $7.99 SketchBook Pro app, currently No. 6 on the list of paid iPad apps, has sold 10,000 copies so far, according to the company.

SketchBook Prop is a sophisticated painting and drawing application that, in its iPad manifestation, allows users to create and color images with their fingers.

As with many apps designed (or redesigned) for the iPad, SketchBook Pro was the result of a mad dash by Autodesk developers that began in late January when Apple announced the iPad. The company left most sofware engineers little to work with, however, since they had no access to the device itself.

"One thing we knew for sure was you couldn’t just take a iPhone App, make it bigger and consider it done," said Chris Cheung, the SketchBook product manager. "So we actually had paper cutouts of iPads to start the design process — to imagine what holding one would be like and how you would really want to interact with the new device."

-- David Sarno

Perhaps tidying up the last of the privacy kerfuffle that marred Google Buzz's launch, Google will highlight changes to its social networking product's privacy settings Monday.

When users click on the Buzz tab in Gmail, a screen asks them to confirm their current privacy settings. The page displays the sites that are connected to your profile (e.g. Twitter, Picasa), who you're following, who is following you and whether those lists of people are shown on your public profile.

The confirmation screen will show up in Buzz for all Gmail users by the end of the day Monday, a Google spokeswoman said.

The page echoes changes Google made to Buzz nearly two months ago. In February, Google began suggesting profiles to follow on Buzz rather than automatically connecting users with people they frequently e-mail. The changes also stopped Buzz from automatically broadcasting users' public photos on Picasa Web Albums and shared posts in Google Reader.

With the initial ruckus behind it, Google is hoping that Buzz can begin to chip away at Facebook and Twitter's hefty lead in the social network race.

-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian

Image: Google Buzz confirmation screen. Credit: Patrick Roanhouse / Plan8 Podcast

Related:

• Lawmakers ask FTC to investigate Google Buzz
• Why Google Buzz isn't labeled 'beta' and why it sort of is anyway
• Google gives Buzz users more control over their inbox
• Google Buzz poses a major privacy risk for kids, analyst (and parent) says
• Google Buzz is planning more changes to please -- and appease -- users

Now that the iPad has hit stores, new owners and prospective buyers are probably wondering which applications to download as soon as they break the tablet out of its box.

That's where we come in. Below you will find five applications available in Apple's App Store that are ideal for new iPad owners. Some are free and others will set you back a few bucks, but in any case, they're worth having.

Let's take a look.

1. WeatherBug Elite for iPad

The built-in weather application in the iPad is fine, but it offers only basic functionality such as current conditions and forecasts. WeatherBug Elite for iPad, on the other hand, delivers a full-fledged weather experience. The app boasts information on severe weather alerts, live images of weather around the U.S. and more. It even allows users to view live Doppler radar. Plus, it's free.

2. Netflix

Netflix's streaming content is available on the Web, on all three major video game consoles and, now, the iPad. The free app allows users to stream thousands of movies and television shows directly to the iPad wherever a Web connection is available. In order to use the service, iPad owners must have a Netflix unlimited subscription plan, starting at $8.99 a month.

3. SoundHound

SoundHound is one of the most intriguing apps in this roundup. When users load it up, they need only hum or sing a song near the iPad's microphone and the app figures out  the name of the song. Once the track is found, users can opt to buy it on iTunes or stream it over YouTube. It's a really neat app, but it costs $4.99.

4. Twitterrific for iPad

The iPad is a great social-networking device. That's precisely why the free Twitterrific for iPad app is a must-have. The program allows users to check in on their Twitter feeds to see what followers are saying. They can also update their status and respond to direct messages from within the app. Twitterrific for iPad even allows users to search and filter content.

5. Desktop Connect

The iPad may be a nice computing device in its own right, but some folks might want added functionality available only on their laptops or desktops.

If so, Desktop Connect, which costs $11.99, is the app for them. The app allows users to access their Macs or Windows PCs from the iPad and totally control those computers over the Web. Users can open programs and perform any other operating-system task right from the iPad.

-- Don Reisinger
twitter.com/donreisinger

Apple announced Monday morning that it had sold more than 300,000 iPads on Saturday, the first day they were commercially available.  Users also downloaded more than 1 million apps for the device and a quarter of a million e-books.

“It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world -- it’s going to be a game-changer,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, in a statement.  “IPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad.”

The sales figure was in line with some estimates over the weekend, including one from Piper Jaffrey's Gene Munster, who guessed the company had sold between 600,000 and 700,000 units over the weekend (that is, including Sunday).  The number Apple gave included pre-orders made online.

The second series of 3G-ready iPads debuts later this month.

In 2008, Apple sold one million iPhone 3G's in the device's first weekend.  And in 2007, it took the company 74 days to sell one million of the original iPhones. 

-- David Sarno

(Because of rough language, we can't link directly to the above YouTube video, which is called "Brand new iPad getting smashed by a baseball bat.")

Justin Kocott took a novel approach to iPad release weekend. Instead of rushing home with his brand-new, $499 toy to download dozens of apps and tweet about how cool it was, he decided to destroy it with a baseball bat. And make a video of it.

The clip quickly became one of Sunday's most viewed YouTube videos, scoring 180,000 views in less than 12 hours. Whether you think the video is a delicious bit of countercultural anti-hype or more evidence of the dissolution of suburban youth, its success suggests that if nothing else, they were thinking different.

We caught up with Kocott, a 19-year-old Pittsburgh high school student, to ask him about the "project."

What gave you the idea for the video?

Pretty much that I've seen people smash Wiis and Playstation 3s and stuff, so this was something new. I wanted to be the first one to do it before other people did it. It was just something to do.

I knew some people would hate it, but I didn't think that many people would hate it. A lot of people are leaving really bad comments.

Like what?

Some people are saying I should've donated the money instead of wasting it. But my family donates money all the time. Last year we gave $10-15,000 to the Make a Wish Foundation (my little sister is sick).  It's not like we're greedy, it's not like we did it to rub it in and say, "We have the money, oh look at us."

Are you glad you did it?

I love that I did it. I did it with my money. And we actually ended up  buying two more iPads that we kept. The one that I bought was the 16Gb. I had to save up a bit to get it, I don't just walk around with $500 in my pocket. But the fact that so many people hate  it -- I don't want to say I love that, but it's funny. 

Who were all the guys in the video?

The one person that drops it, that's my friend Rocko. The guy in the green is my other brother. I'm the one in the white shirt who hit it with the baseball bat first. And then there's a store manager from the Best Buy.

The manager from Best Buy was there watching?!

Yeah, we did it outside the Best Buy. We didn't even play with it first or anything, we just took it straight out of the box. I actually asked the manager if he wanted to come watch. He didn't believe us, so he decided to come along. Then afterward he said, "I really honestly didn't think you were going to do that."

Are you trying to become a YouTube star or something?

I make a lot of videos, but it's messing around, I never really take them seriously. I'm not trying to make a career on it or anything. Anybody would like it if their video got a bunch of views.

So does this mean you're not an Apple fan, or what?

People are saying I must hate Apple for doing this. Not even. We still have two other iPads, plus my family has iPhones, Macs and iPods. I do not at all hate Apple. I love Apple, actually.

Any more plans for gadget bashing?

After everyone said how much they hated watching this, I was talking about maybe wanting to break a 3-D TV.

-- David Sarno

The scenario sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie -- the doctor pulls out her touch-screen tablet computer from the drawer of instruments. She calls up the patient's chart with a few taps and proceeds to add a note to the page with her latest diagnosis. A visualization pops up, and she flips the screen over to give the patient an idea of what ails him.

Doctors are presuming the iPad could make this scene a reality as soon as next week.

Seems everybody is buzzing about Apple's new "magical and revolutionary" product, as the company calls it, and that includes MDs in between consultations or surgeries. One in five doctors say they plan to buy an iPad, according to a survey of 350 clinicians by the San Mateo medical software vendor Epocrates.

A UCLA psychiatrist is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his iPad on Saturday. John Luo, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry, considers medical apps on his iPhone indispensable. The only thing missing is a sufficiently large screen to share the images with patients, he said.

"Some of my patients are a little older, and they have trouble reading the screen," Luo said on the phone Friday. "If I could run the same app on a larger screen so that I can show it to the patients, that would be better."

My favorite Q&A on Coachella's website deals with the question of whether or not payphones will be available inside the venue. The answer on the FAQ page advised concert-goers that, "This is 2010. Get a cell phone."

But the organizers of the concert (April 16th-18th) missed a chance to offer even more cellphone-related helpfulness: just as essential as the phone itself is the 2010 Coachella app for iPhone and Android.

Over 50,000 users downloaded the 2009 version, and with smartphone adoption skyrocketing, it's sure to be more this year.

My favorite aspect of the application is the friend finder feature. Considering last year's festival attracted  more than 160,000 people, I have no doubt I will get lost in crowds multiple times that weekend (see the video above if you're curious what a packed show at Coachella looks like).

To use the friend finder feature, simply add your friends' e-mail addresses to the application, then have them add your e-mail address to the Coachella application on their phones. The application is set up to help you find each other: A map records where each friend was standing based on the last time they opened their Coachella app. The friends show up as dots on your Coachella map, which you can then click on to see the specific friend's e-mail address. (See purple dot in the image below.)

(I'm told this hasn't always worked well in the past, as phone service can be hit-or-miss in the chaos of the music festival. AT&T, however, is promising to provide expanded service this year, according to the app's developer, David Bullock.) 

The application features a countdown to Coachella and a full list of performers. In the coming days, as concert details get released, users will be able to check out specific performance times and sort artists they want to see by venue location.

If you plan on taking pictures during the festival, the application also provides a way to upload the images. The pictures, once approved by concert organizers, will be uploaded onto the main Coachella.com website, Bullock said.

And unlike the overpriced beer and snacks, and the pricey ticket, this app is refreshingly free.

-- Zohreen Adamjee

Pat Fallis, who'd been standing in line at The Grove Apple Store since 2 .a.m., shows his excitement at being the first one let in to buy a new iPad. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times.

Amid an atmosphere of carefully cultivated euphoria, hundreds of Apple fans waited in line eagerly at the Grove on Saturday morning, excited to get their hands on some of the first of Apple's new iPad tablet computers. 

"It's a new member of the family!" said Pat Fallis, a Los Angeles producer who, along with his wife and a friend, had been waiting in line since 2 a.m.  Fallis was the first to buy an iPad at the store, and along with many of the others who waited patiently for hours, was greeted by a crowd of blue-shirted Apple employees with cheers and high fives, as though being welcomed onto the football field.

The store quickly filled up with buyers, who were ushered to shelves, and then to checkout areas by store clerks, who themselves were armed with special iPhones with infrared scanners that expedited the sales process.  Thereafter, new iPad owners were shown how to log in to the device to begin surfing the Web, receiving e-mail, and playing with the device's applications.

Apple has sought to portray the iPad as a next-generation computing device -- without a keyboard or a mouse, the flat tablet is essentially a large touch screen where all interaction comes from the users' fingers -- tapping here, dragging there to open windows and manipulate objects on the screen. It is designed to offer most types of media -- television, books, games, music, Web pages -- as well as providing communications features like e-mail and Twitter.

Dozens of people huddled in winter coats and blankets braved the frigid, sub-60-degree weather to spend the early morning hours in line at Apple Stores around Los Angeles.

As is customary these days for a major product launch by Apple Inc., the faithful waited patiently in line for their chance at spending money on the company's latest product, the iPad.

One group at the Pasadena location began lining up at 8 p.m. the night before. Others, who were already guaranteed an iPad thanks to pre-orders, lined up not long after that anyway. For the social aspect or something.