Sharapova's US Open wardrobe is inspired by New York's skyline

For 2007 U.S. Open Sharapova is wearing tennis dresses decorated with graphic interpretations of the cityscape on the chest.

The dress is a sleek garment made of a breathable wicking jersey and constructed with a no-sew technique with seams bonded with heat and silicone instead of thread.
There are more than 600 Swarovski crystals incorporated into the design, adding a little flash to the outfit, but Sharapova said it's simple and classy, which suits her taste. "I don't like things with too much pattern ... things that are tacky.''
There also are three crystal buttons down the back, creating a keyhole effect.

No thats a quality dress i reckon. By the way she is through to the third round as well.

Behave# and NSpec - Behaviour Driven Development

I found something new today. I was reading casper's blog and came across Behave# and NSpec.

Behave# is a framework for defining and executing application requirement goals. These characterizations are modeled after the Behavioral Driven Design (BDD) terms Story, Scenario, Given, When, Then.

Behaviour Driven Development, or BDD, represents the evolution of current coding practices with respect to Test Driven Development (TDD).

One of the good points of behave# is that that if you want to specify Exceptions as part of your story, this forces you to move away from [ExpectedException]. Which is a Good Thing anyway.
It is quite verbose, although the verbose-ness is one of the qualities that could make it attractive to product owners or PMs. The code is really to express acceptance tests rather than developer-focused 'unit' tests. (Have a look of Behave# code example on casper's blog)

I think i am going to try a real world example and see how it goes or to put it more appropriately to see if it grows on me and how comfortable i feel.

Debugging Microsoft .NET 2.0 Applications Book

Today evening, i borrowed the book Debugging Microsoft .NET 2.0 Applications from a friend of mine. While iwas in the train heading home, i started reading the first chapter which is so meaningful in a programmers day to day life. The content of the book is very well organized and the flow of writing is just too good. It is a must read book.

On the first of page of first chapter i came across a few lines which really made me think how appropriate and improtant this book is for a progammer.

Quoting form the book Debugging Microsoft .NET 2.0 Applications:

"Debugging is also a part of software development that's famous for causing you to pull all-nighters. I'hv yet to run into an engineer who has called his or her partner to say, Honey, I can't come home because we're having so much fun doing our UML daigrams that we want to pull an all-nighter! However, I'hv run into plenty of engineers who have called their partner with the lament, Honey, I can't come home because we've run inot a whopper of a bug"

Well, I am sure any programmer (I mean a real programmer) would agree with this. Let me know what you all think

Google's gPhone

I have been hearing about Google's gPhone for over six months now but it was mostly speculation and hype by somebody on his blog or some avid google follower who thinks google is not only working on a gPhone, but also on an Operating System, a revolutionary gComputer and etc. etc.. list goes on.

However, the on again, off again offering to the mobile world by the search giant is reaching fanatical levels of hype and thanks to a recent news story by Rediff News in India, the hype is only getting worse. The story published by Rediff said that the gPhone is two weeks away from launch!!!! Now that is some serious speculation. Sources close to the development said a simultaneous launch across the US and Europe and India is expected, and announcements would be sent to media firms in India and other parts of the world in a week.

Well but all this is still simply a rumor, but a good one nevertheless. Lets wait and watch if google makes an official announcement. If they come out with a gPhone by any chance i am definitely going to get my hands on it asap, as i just love the way they make software.

Opps...aren't we talknig about hardware too over here!!!

.NET Stock Trader Application

Microsoft has created a sample online stock trading application to demo the securities industry that its Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and .NET technologies can be used for high-performance applications within a service-oriented architecture. The application also offers full interoperability with J2EE and IBM Websphere sample application.

I am working as a Technology Consultant in capital markets domain and have noticed that microsoft technologies are still not popular and not the first choice as development tools for trading applications. However i think this sample application might open a few doors and show people the power and flexibilty of microsoft technologies.

The .NET stock trader application uses:

• Service-oriented, n-tier design with ASP.NET and WCF.
• NET 3.0 with Windows Communication Foundation.
• .NET Enterprise Application Server Technologies.

Check it out here: .NET Stock Trader App