Now that Apple’s iPad is shipping in the US, Apple has turned on the firehouse, so to speak. The iTunes App Store activated its iPad applications gallery two-days before the iPads arrive at the doorsteps of those who pre-ordered in the US.

Apple updated its MobileMe service to support the iPad with the same functionality as that of the iPhone -- Find My iPad and Remote Wipe. Lastly, Apple also listed websites that work on the iPad, e.g., CNN, Reuters, New York Times, Time, Major League Baseball, The White House, Virgin America, Sports Illustrated, People Magazine, TED.com and even video-site Vimeo and Flickr, to give consumers a look at the future of internet video, which is HTML5 and not Flash, as most people think. Flash is not supported on Apple’s iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad.

In anticipation of receiving my own iPad (hint to my editor), I checked out the list of iPad applications available right now, but not before I checked my iPhone apps for updates.

Lo and behold, I had 15 applications ready for updates -- I downloaded all of them, of course. Whilst downloading, I checked the list of updated features and found that most are ‘small’ tweaks -- adding iPad support. Cool, huh?

You need to be on iTunes 9.1 to be able to get support for the iPad. iTunes 9.1 changed the label of Applications to Apps and added a Book category in your iTunes library.

Checking out the Apps will give you an idea which apps in your library are universal, i.e., supports iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad, which apps are only for the iPad and which ones are only for the iPod Touch and iPhone.

In my library, Box.net, Comics, Instapaper Pro, Instaviz, Papers, Wordpress and Metal Gear Solid Touch just became Universal - for free! Of these applications, I am pretty excited to get Box.net to interface with my iPad for online storage, Comics for an awesome view of graphic novels and comics on that awesome iPad screen, Instapaper Pro for offline viewing of online content, Instaviz for charting and Papers to organize all my journal articles, conference proceedings, white papers, manuals, etc.. The Wordpress application is an welcome addition, too, for those quick on-the-go blogging.

I downloaded the iPad-only Twitterrific for iPad for my Twitter-client and Wall Street Journal applications - just to see how good a newspaper would look like. These two applications are available for free. :)

I also added an eBay for iPad app, an ABC player (for the US ABC TV network), Bible HD, Bloomberg client, Dictionary.com, Draw for iPad, Wikipanion, TruPhone, TVUPlayer Lite and WeRule (a game). I am still checking out the list of free iPad applications.

Two applications that I know I will use on the iPad are Apple’s Numbers and Pages. Pages for the usual document processing and Numbers for spreadsheets. I need them for my classes and projects. These two are not free, though. Keynote for iPad is also available but I am not sure if I need it just yet. Maybe if someone will gift me with one. (*hint*hint*)

There are some applications on my iPhone that were not upgraded to Universal for free, so that means I need to buy them again (which I will not, of course). Examples of these are Plants-vs-Zombies, Command & Conquer Red Alert, Things for iPad, Scrabble, FieldRunners, and Photogene.

If you want to gift me with some of these apps, Keynote for iPad, Scrabble, Things, Command & Conquer Red Alert and Plants-vs-Zombies are high on the list, along with Omnigraffle for iPad and SlingPlayer. :)

So, are you ready for the next generation in computing? The computers-as-appliance generation has started and the iPad is at the forefront of this revolution.