I’d like to take a moment to wish a Happy Birthday to the best little classic gaming device, the Sony PSP. What it lacks in terms of keyboard, it makes up for in its portability and abundance of various emulators. And good looks, of course.
The other news is that another release of Spark is nearing. This update will send certain tasks such as message sending to background, allowing you to browse around while the message is being sent. In addition, this release will include the oft-requested ‘Compare games’ feature, which allows you to see your friends’ play history and achievements (see screenshot after the jump).
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- Game comparison screen
This is also probably a good time to discuss the goal of the application, namely that it’s largely a playground for me to test various design patterns and methods. I get frequent comments on the application’s lack of good looks, which I do not take as an insult – just to reassure those of you who are wondering, the primary goal of Spark is not to look good. It’s to be practical enough to make paying for other for-pay applications impractical 
You may have noticed that gsDroid is no longer available on Market. I officially discontinued work on the app a while back; a week ago, I decided to take it off the Market completely. The application is terribly inefficient in how it handles data, and I don’t wish to clobber XBox’s servers unnecessarily any longer.
Look forward to a new version of Spark sometime in the next couple of weeks.