"Peggle" and Amazon's Kindle store debut for iPhone

PopCap Games has released the popular "Peggle" game for the iPhone and iPod touch. It's a $4.99 download from the Apple App Store. The casual game has been downloaded more than 50 million times to date.

“Our new adaptation of Peggle for iPhone and iPod touch was truly a labor of love,” said Andrew Stein, director of mobile business development at PopCap. “We spent huge amounts of time specifically optimizing this version of one of our favorite games to one of the world’s coolest devices, so that it was just right.”

To play, gamers fire a metallic silver ball from the top of the screen, relying on gravity to propel the ball downwards while it ricochets off unique arrangements of orange and blue pegs. The goal is to clear all the orange pegs from the screen, while earning as many points as possible, before running out of balls. A moving bucket at the bottom of the screen offers free balls, while green power-up pegs unlock special abilities via ten unique and memorable Peggle Masters who guide players through dozens of levels of gameplay challenges. Power-ups include explosive area-clearing blasts, lobster claws that serve as pinball-like flippers and “fireballs” that cut through all pegs in their path.

Also, Amazon has launched a special Kindle Store optimized for the Safari Web browser on iPhone. Now when users of the Kindle for iPhone app click on “Get Books,” the new Kindle Store tailored for the size and shape of the iPhone and iPod touch screens automatically opens in Safari. This optimized Kindle store offers iPhone and iPod touch app users quick and easy access to the Kindle Store’s 280,000 books, including 106 of 112 New York Times Best Sellers and most New Releases that are available for $9.99 or less.

iPhone users can shop Kindle’s selection of books on the iPhone and iPod touch using Apple's Multi-Touch user interface. Amazon's Whispersync technology saves and synchronizes Kindle customers’ bookmarks across Kindle, iPhone and iPod touch, so you always have your reading with you and never lose your place. Kindle customers can read a few pages on their iPhone or iPod touch and pick up right where they left off on their Kindle, if they choose.