TOKYO/LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO Apple Inc's new iPhone debuted with a splash across the globe, spurring thousands to queue around city blocks and snap up the final gadget unveiled during co-founder Steve Jobs' life. 
 
 Shares of Apple leapt 3 percent to close at a record after people thronged stores in Sydney, Tokyo, London, Paris, New York and San Francisco to get their hands on the iPhone 4S, ignoring criticism about the lack of a design revolution and reports of software glitches. 
 
 Fans in Sydney, Tokyo, Frankfurt and London made sure Jobs, who died last week, remained part of the iPhone 4S launch, with flower, candle and photo shrines erected outside stores. A black-and-white picture of the visionary leader in Covent Garden carried the line: "Let's make a dent in the universe." 
 
 In New York and San Francisco, hundreds showed up as expected but the mood proved more subdued than was typical on an iPhone launch day. 
 
 "I have a lot of respect for how he led the company and so the turnout, and especially the preorder sales, is a mark of appreciation for him," insisted Chris Centers, who was one of the people who has lined up outside the store. 
 
 One of the buyers had also stopped by to lay flowers at the San Francisco store's glass wall in honor of Jobs. 
 
 The new model looks similar to the previous iPhone 4 but has an upgraded camera, faster processor, enhanced security and voice-activated software, which lets users ask the phone questions. The voice software drew glowing reviews. 
 
 Unveiled just a day before Jobs died, it was initially dubbed a disappointment, partly because it looked identical to its predecessor. But anticipation of the "Siri" voice software helped it set an online record in orders on October 7. 
 
 Rivals' woes may have provided a boost. Research in Motion struggled for days to fix an international outage of its email and messaging services. 
 
 Also, about one in four people who thronged Apple stores from Tokyo to San Francisco told Reuters they were ditching BlackBerries, discarding Nokias or even giving up Google Android-based phones, hoping for something better. 
 
 Apple CEO Tim Cook and his executive team hope the first device sold without Jobs at Apple's helm will protect the company against a growing challenge from the likes of arch-rival Samsung Electronics. 
 
 Analysts believe the South Korean company, which powers its phones with Google's Android software, surpassed Apple as the world's biggest smartphone vendor in terms of unit sales in the third quarter. 
 
 Apple does not release sales on launch day, so gauging initial figures is difficult. However, the company took more than 1 million online orders in the first 24 hours after the release of the iPhone 4S, exceeding the 600,000 for the iPhone 4, which was sold in fewer countries initially. 
 
 Sprint -- joining Verizon and AT&T; in Apple's roster for the first time -- said on Friday it had chalked up a launch-day sales record for any device -- by around noon. 
 
 Jobs "made everything better and the products he released were thought through in such detail," Duncan Hoare, a foreign exchange trader, said as a loud roar greeted the opening of an Apple store in London. "It was about the beauty of something and the simplicity." 
 
 GLITCHES? 
 
 The iPhone -- seen as the gold standard for smartphones -- is Apple's highest-margin product and accounts for 40 percent of its annual revenue. The newest iteration uses chips from Qualcomm Inc, Toshiba and a host of smaller semiconductor companies, according to repair firm iFixit, which cracked the device open on Thursday. 
 
 Despite the enthusiasm at stores, Friday's launch was marred somewhat by widespread complaints on the Internet this week about problems downloading iOS 5, the latest version of Apple's mobile software. 
 
 There were also problems with iCloud, Apple's online communications, media storage and backup service formally launched on Wednesday; users reported glitches such as losing their email access. 
 
 Queues in Paris were smaller than those normally seen for a brand-new iPhone, with some fans there wondering if the somewhat underwhelming introduction had put people off. But in London and elsewhere the lines were as long as ever. 
 
 "Despite the initial disappointment that this wasn't an iPhone 5, the reality is we're still seeing the usual frenzy that we've got used to on launch day," analyst Ben Wood at CCS Insight told Reuters. Analysts expect global sales of a few million phones on the first weekend, he added. 
 
 Analysts point to several factors in Apple's favor, including a $199 price that matches up well with rival devices, and availability promised on more than 100 carriers by the end of 2011, far more than its predecessors. 
 
 Underscoring the enthusiasm for the new phone, Japanese mobile carrier Softbank Corp had to temporarily stop contract applications after its computer system was overwhelmed with more requests than it had expected. 
 
 Some analysts expect fourth-quarter iPhone shipments to reach 30 million or more, almost twice as many as a year ago. 
 
 "I am a fan, a big fan. I want something to remember Steve Jobs by," said Haruko Shiraishi, waiting patiently with her Yorkshire terrier Miu Miu at the end of an eight-block queue in Tokyo's smart Ginza shopping district. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Michael Perry in SYDNEY, Edwin Chan in LOS ANGELES, Isabel Reynolds in TOKYO, Marie Mawad in PARIS, Jens Hack in MUNICH, Christoph Steitz in FRANKFURT, Giles Elgood, Matt Cowan, Kate Holton and Georgina Prodhan in LONDON, Supantha Mukherjee in NEW YORK, and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; Editing by Mark Bendeich, Alex Richardson, Sophie Walker and John Wallace) ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. 
 
 Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. 
 
 Beloit, Wis. – Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow. 
 
 Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually. 
 
 The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat. 
 
 Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older. 
 
 Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992. 
 
 For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead. 
 
 1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive. 
 
 2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. 
 
 3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.” 
 
 4. Al Gore has always been animated. 
 
 5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along. 
 
 6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High. 
 
 7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo. 
 
 8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities. 
 
 9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend. 
 
 10. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren't afraid of immigration...unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet. 
 
 11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis. 
 
 12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry. 
 
 13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation. 
 
 14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine. 
 
 15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause. 
 
 16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways. 
 
 17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection. 
 
 18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess. 
 
 19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone. 
 
 20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed. 
 
 21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn. 
 
 22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech. 
 
 23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars. 
 
 24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording. 
 
 25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks. 
 
 26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides. 
 
 27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive. 
 
 28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day. 
 
 29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown. 
 
 30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows. 
 
 31. The first home computer they probably touched was an Apple II or Mac II; they are now in a museum. 
 
 32. Czechoslovakia has never existed. 
 
 33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen. 
 
 34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always offered an alternative to the hospital. 
 
 35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall. 
 
 36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones. 
 
 37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.” 
 
 38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. 
 
 39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes. 
 
 40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics. 
 
 41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam. 
 
 42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict. 
 
 43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space. 
 
 44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs. 
 
 45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college. 
 
 46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station. 
 
 47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents. 
 
 48. Someone has always gotten married in space. 
 
 49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States. 
 
 50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps. 
 
 51. Food has always been irradiated. 
 
 52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church. 
 
 53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he? 
 
 54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy. 
 
 55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties. 
 
 56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street. 
 
 57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife. 
 
 58. Beethoven has always been a good name for a dog. 
 
 59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone. 
 
 60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48. 
 
 61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else. 
 
 62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine. 
 
 63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies. 
 
 64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely. 
 
 65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus. 
 
 66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court. 
 
 68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S. 
 
 69. It seems the Post Office has always been going broke. 
 
 70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping. 
 
 71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing. 
 
 72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been. 
 
 73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated. 
 
 74. They've always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi (SYFY) Channel. 
 
 75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.
– There's no way to sugarcoat this: We are one shallow nation. Google today revealed its annual Zeitgeist, in which it crunches billions of Google searches "to capture the year's 10 fastest-rising global queries and the rest of the spirit of 2011." Here's what the spirit of this year was comprised of: Rebecca Black, Google+, Ryan Dunn, Casey Anthony, and Battlefield 3. And what's beyond the top 5 is only slightly more encouraging, and much more Apple-flavored: (the non-existent) iPhone 5, Adele, TEPCO, Steve Jobs, and iPad 2. Writing for Gizmodo, Sam Biddle notes that "we should all be ashamed of ourselves"—sorta. Luckily, "our zeitgeist isn't a series of persistent trends, or the truly influential. It's people and things that were tossed in the grease pit of the global consciousness, fizzed for a while, and then burned out—tablet fire sales, memes, fake weddings, Google+." So it's not what really mattered. Thank goodness. You can search the list by a ton of different categories and countries; click to dig in.