The venerable Washington Post finally has its own iPad app, and it's free until February 2011. One neat feature: it has "live topic" pages which pull together several stories and social media commentary related to some central news item.
The real estate for the Twitter and Facebook commentary on those pages, thanks in part to part of the iPad's real estate being forfeited to an advertisement, is pretty small, but the idea of organizing things by specific topic as opposed to a broader section is an interesting one.
Besides those Live Topic pages you can expect to find multimedia like videos and slideshows, as well as your regular WaPo content (which can be saved for offline reading). Articles can be shared via Twitter, Facebook, and email, etc.
All in all it's a goog app for a good paper, and its notion that the iPad isn't just another receptacle for its content but rather a chance to share it in a new way—in this case with context from other articles and social media—is a promising one. Free until February, when print subscribers will pay $.99 a month and non-subscribers will pay $3.99 a month. [iTunes via WaPo]