In one of those rare cases where fame may not be an advantage, a few celebrities were spotted in line as well -- Whoopi Goldberg in NYC, Kevin Smith in Los Angeles. The Mayor of Philadelphia was confronted by a former city employee while waiting. And at the last minute, Spike Lee stepped in at the front of the line at the Apple Soho store in New York to help raise money for Keep A Child Alive, who plan to sell their iPhone on eBay to raise money for African children with AIDS. Others have also gone online to sell their newly-acquired phones, many probably for less altruistic reasons; bids were above $1,000 on eBay. The early purchasers seemed pleased with their new gadget. Gadget Lab's Mark McClusky found himself grinning with "gadget love" at regular intervals, and Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin said the "Jesusphone" felt like "just about the coolest device I've ever owned." She marveled at the interface and largely dismissed the speed issues with AT&T's Edge network that some critics pointed to. (As for that other major critic -- no downloadable third-party apps -- there are already web-based apps available.) But another Gadget Lab blogger, Scott Gilbertson, said his first impression of the iPhone was that it's not worth the money at the current price.

Proud new owners are uploading photos, many showing close-up views of the phone's hardware and interface. Over at Think Secret, they were busy breaking the hearts of the empty-handed by taking an iPhone apart, the logical conclusion of what Wired called "unboxing porn".

If you didn't wait in line, and still want an iPhone, all is not lost. Craigslist and eBay aside, Gizmodo reported (and commenters confirmed) that last night, several Apple stores -- including in New York and San Francisco -- still had phones available, leading to discussion about whether that was because demand was lower than expected or because Steve Jobs is a supply-chain genius. Apple's own iPhone store is now open, though supplies there are limited and you'll likely wait a few weeks for delivery. If it's the long AT&T contract that really puts you off, there's always a way out of that too -- bad credit.

Did you buy an iPhone on opening day? Do you plan to purchase one soon? Comment below.

With the release date less than three weeks away, will you be standing in line at an Apple store to get an iPhone?

Apparently not content with the growing popularity of their Roomba and Scooba robots, iRobot launched a new product called iRobot Create. It looks like the floor-scrubbing Scooba, with the addition of ports that allow users to modify the bot by attaching extension to it. Add-ons can be purchased, but iRobot expects that people will also create their own, CNET News.com reported. So far, attachments that turn the robot into a sock-picker-upper or a hamster-ball car have been created.

If you'd prefer for your cute, round robots to stick to washing your floors, then Microbot has you covered. Their UBOT sweeps, vacuums and mops, and can run along UV sensitive tracks under your flooring; the company is installing them in every new South Korean home, Gizmodo reported. A Stateside launch for the product is planned.

In other robot news, Honda's Asimo was demonstrated at CES on Tuesday. Recovering from the embarrassment of previous public appearances, an Engadget video shows that the humanoid robot runs and dances, and can now manage the stairs without tumbling. They grow up so quickly...

Takagi Industrial's Fresh Seat toilet seat has been tasked with less glamorous automated jobs: washing, drying and deodorizing, specifically. It also closes the toilet seat automatically -- perhaps solving an age-old debate for couples -- and heats up. Gizmodo found that last feature essential: "Trust me, a nice warm toilet seat is like a hug for your butt on those cold winter mornings."

A multi-player game based on the popular "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies will be launched on the site this spring and open to free play, according to paidContent.org. Other worlds based on the company's properties are planned, Iger said, bringing to mind an online version of Disney's theme parks.

Disney's existing site is already popular with kids and their parents, but it remains to be seen whether the new portal will expand on that. As paidContent.org put it, the question is "Will they want to make Disney.com a virtual home or will it just be someplace to visit?"

Preteens like Disney properties like "Cheetah Girls" and "Hannah Montana" but might not favor the parent controls the new site will feature. Red Herring compared Disney's venture to Wal-Mart's short-lived The Hub and said some believe that site was shut down because tweens didn't want a controlled social networking experience.

(Photo: President and CEO of The Walt Disney Company Robert Iger/REUTERS)

There's been some lavish praise in the tech and gadget blogs, particularly for the phone's design. NextLust called iPhone "the sexiest thing we've seen today." SciAm Observations summed the device up as "a juggernaut/vanity mirror/black hole into the matrix of iLife."

The iPhone's partnerships with Yahoo and Google for email, maps and web searching position it as "the latest Blackberry killer," said ReadWriteWeb. Blackberry manufacturer RIM's stock took a tumble yesterday, along with Palm. Gizmodo said "I have a bit of sympathy for our friends at RIM and Nokia."

But not everyone is in love with iPhone. Gadget Lab found five things to dislike; Dan Warne at APC Magazine came up with ten. The phone's touchscreen garnered considerable attention, with The Cool Hunter calling it "a breakthrough in touch pad navigation," but some wondered how it would stand up against grubby fingers or keys. Others complained about Apple's service agreement with Cingular, though Cult of Mac predicted that entrepreneurial types would find a way around that. And finally, there was disappointment that iPhone's use of Mac OS X doesn't mean that users can install extras like Skype on it.

American customers will have to wait until June to try iPhone out for themselves. In the meantime, Gizmodo put forth some recommendations for new phones that have less buzz but still bring something to the table.

Away from the LCD vs. plasma battle, gizmag said the really important news from Sharp is that some of the sets to be released by the end of 2007 will have refresh rates double the current standard at 120Hz. LG is showing a 102-inch LCD this year, but Kotaku called it "yawn-inducing" compared to Sharp's television, though Gizomodo said that the display quality on that unit isn't perfect.

MediaFile commenters made some helpful suggestions about what to do with a 100-inch television, but you could also wait for Sony's prototype 27-inch LCD with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. Engadget liked that one too.

Bill Gates opened CES for the 10th consecutive year, confirming the rumors about Internet Protocol TV (IPTV). The service will bring TiVo-esque capabilities to Microsoft's Xbox 360, for example letting users record television shows in the background while playing Xbox Live.

Details are still thin for IPTV for Xbox 360, which will be launched for the 2007 holiday season, so much of the online interest in the announcement comes from speculation of what's yet to come. There was no mention of DVR or a bigger hard drive for the Xbox in the keynote, two expected features that would make sense with IPTV.

Wired's Game|Life noted that making the service available through select providers like AT&T gives Microsoft an opportunity to get Xbox 360 systems into the homes of subscribers when they sign up for television service. As a few bloggers pointed out, Sony can't do that with their rival Playstation 3 console. Yet, anyway.

Elsewhere, enormous televisions led to excited -- and somewhat bewildered -- posts (and lots of pictures) at tech and gadget blogs.

Before CES began, Christopher Null at Yahoo! Tech predicted that a 120-inch television would smash last year's 103-inch record for a plasma set. A display of those proportions hasn't yet been announced, but there are behemoths up on offer just the same. So far, Sharp's 108-inch display takes the record with a high-definition LCD unit. At 94 inches high and 53 inches wide, it's just a bit bigger than LG's 100-inch, $100k competitor.

The units could be another body blow in the war between plasma and LCD. The latter already had the buzz and the increasing sales, and now they may have the "MTV Cribs" market cornered as well. Gizmodo put it like this: "LCD is now the sexy bling-bing technology. And plasma is looking like a dowdy old maid."

If you just aren't sure if there's room in your living room -- or bank account -- for a television taller than you are, Sharp's 70-inch LCD will probably be a relative bargain at $33,000 when it's released next month.

(Reuters photos)