The App Catalog on the HP TouchPad might not have the most expansive selection in the tablet space, but it's got some pretty decent apps in it. One of those is the free USA Today app, which provides a slick interface for accessing the news site's stories. And as it would turn out, it's a relatively popular app. From a leaked slide from an internal USA Today presentation, we've learned that the USA Today app for TouchPad has been downloaded 250,000 times, which isn't bad for a platform that might have over a million devices on market.

While that pales in comparison to the 2.9 million downloads for the iPad, the webOS tablet app handily trounces its Android tablet competition. All standard Android tablets (excluding the Amazon Kindle Fire, because while it's based on Android, it's not a "true" Android tablet) combined have netted a total of 130,000 downloads. That's on tablets from multiple manufacturers who are still standing behind the product. Heck, HP's defunct tablet has managed to clock more app downloads than Windows Phone as a platform.

Is this a sign of the success of webOS? Not really, since a good number of those downloads likely came from users that had purchased their TouchPad at fire sale prices. This is more an indictment of the state of Android tablets, that despite the forces pushing them they have yet to see notable success. Meanwhile, the $200 Kindle Fire has snagged 260,000 downloads of its own custom USA Today app, just barely more than the TouchPad's quarter-million. Not bad for a dead platform, eh?

Source: GeekWire; Via: Daring Fireball

Ready to jump into the wide world of homebrew on your TouchPad, Pre, or Veer? Alright! Here's what you need:

• Your webOS tablet or smartphone
• A computer, Mac or PC, connected to the internet
• A Micro-USB cable to connect the webOS device to your computer (you can use the cable that came with the device, but any Micro-USB cable will do)
• A stiff drink (this isn't required, but you'll deserve one for being awesome enough to be doing homebrew)

Got that? Okay, time for some clarifications. webOS devices do not need to be "rooted" - they come from the factory open enough that special tools aren't needed to install apps outside of the App Catalog or gain access to the operating system. The process of getting a homebrew installer set-up is relatively straight-forward and doesn't involve anything scary or potentially warranty voiding (there are potentially warranty-voiding things you can do after that, but everything described in this how-to is perfectly acceptable).

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It was early December. The whirlwind year that was 2011 was coming to a close and the future of webOS was still a great unknown. But one developer stood up and proclaimed, "My name is Zhephree, and I shall build an app to catalog my media!" And so it was done.

Fast-forward to today and Geoff Gauchet's Wooden Rows app is now available for TouchPad owners. The app leverage's Amazon's vast database of books, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and video games to allow the user to build a searchable library of their own personal physical collection. With that library put together you can then even keep track of when you've loaned things out to friends. Wooden Rows is not a content portal - you can't watch your movies, read your books, or listen to your music through it, nor will you likely ever be able to - it's a personal inventory tracker. If you've got a large media library, we can think of much worse ways to spend $3.99.

If you're in the mood to spend that amount twice, Zhephree has also cut their price of their other flagship app by a dollar, bringing the social network aggregator incredible! (properly lowercase and exclaimed, for the record) down to $3.99 as well. The move is a permanent price cut, and should be an easier pill to swallow for users looking to unite their Facebook, Flickr, foursquare, and Twitter existences in one cohesive stream.

Good news, webOS Nation: Theme Manager is now available! The Enyo-based app by Janne Julkunen (better known around these parts as homebrew master coder Sconix) is now available from WebOS Internals and stands ready to safely install, remove, and mix-and-match your themes.

Thanks to AUSMT, Theme Manager is 100% update safe, meaning you shouldn't have to panic about removing themes before installing an update to webOS. The app can manage both ZIP- and IPK-packaged themes, both side-loaded and downloaded. Themes are even applied in the background by Theme Manager, though a quick Luna Restart may be required afterwards for the changes to take affect.

Have multiple themes and like to switch things up? You can actually mix-and-match parts from multiple themes - a wallpaper from here, icons from there, a boot logo from that one, and system menus from the other one. You can even just pick an aspect or two from a single theme and add them to the default theme - just pick that one part of the theme you like and hit the apply button.

We're working on adapting our own themes gallery here at webOS Nation to be Theme Manager compatible, in the meantime developers interested in packaging their themes for compatibility can find instructions on how to make that happen at the source link below.

So far 3D in smartphones has proven to be a bit of a gimmick. At least we don't have to wear glasses to make it work with devices like the Android-powered HTC Evo 3D, but as it turns out - you don't need a 3D device to take 3D pictures. You can do it with your webOS smartphone and Stereo Camera by AJGF Projects. The app works thanks to the magic of stereoscopy, taking two horizontally separated photos and then 'diverging' your eyes when viewing them. You know, like those Magic Eye books. Stereo Camera allows you to do that with your webOS phone in landscape and portrait, just look un-cross-eyed at the resulting image to see it in magical three dimensions. Normally Stereo Camera would cost you a dollar from the App Catalog, but this week we've got 100 copies to give away to you!

Contest: We have 100 copies of Stereo Camera to give away. Just leave a comment on this post to enter. Contest ends next Sunday at midnight US Eastern Time after which time we will select 100 random entrants to win. Please only leave one comment, multiple entries won’t count. Promo codes are only valid in countries serviced by the App Catalog, and users must be running webOS 2.1 or higher with the latest version of the App Catalog.

Interested? Of course you are. neato! 1.0 is available now in the App Catalog for just $1.43.

If you’re one of those folks that lives in a country where webOS handsets aren’t yet available, but you couldn’t help yourself and got one unlocked and are running it on your network of choice, then you might want to fire up the App Catalog and check out what may be waiting for you. We’ve received reports from Portugal and Sweden that the App Catalog, at least in its free apps version, is now available to those users, despite being in a country where Palm doesn’t officially provide services. And if we had to guess, it's probably becoming available elsewhere. Is this the first step in Palm’s path to eventually open up the App Catalog to everybody (ecommerce included)? We certainly hope so.

Thanks to Stefan and Gilberto for the tips!

Happy Tuesday, everyone! It’s Tuesday that we look at Monday’s apps, and Wednesday that we look at Tuesday’s. It can be confusing, but remember this: there are more apps, and that’s a good thing.

• Picture News brings you the latest news (served up by Yahoo) as a wall of easily-browsed pictures.
• GetHuman provides major business phone numbers, chat options, email address and more that will get you to a real person instead of dealing with an automated routing system.

There are more apps, and they are after the break. Yeah, you’ve gotta click it.

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PreCentral.net Best of 2010 Awards. We received more than 27,000 votes for this year’s awards, and the wide array of winners reflects the variety and ingenuity of the webOS developer community, both official and homebrew. Dozens of apps to choose from, made by dozens of skilled developers, but in the end, there can be only one Best of 2010.

So, without further ado, the winners are... listed after the break. Yeah, such a tease.

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$9.99 might seem like it's on the high-end of the app cost spectrum, but if you're bought into Logitech's SqueezeBox WiFi radios, then getting a quality remote for them on your smartphone seems to be worth at least that cost. Enter Squeeze Control by PreCentral pal Wayne of angryGoat software. It's just hit version 2.0, bringing a really-great new interface, landscape controls, and the ability to easily manage multiple players.

Check out the angryGoat forums for more info on the new release and some hints that there are webOS 2.0 features in the pipeline as well. Like we said: a must-buy for Squeezebox owners.