Kevin Hoffman

Recently I installed the Beta 2 version of "Geneva", or ADFS 2.0. All of my machines are now Windows 7 machines, including just about all of my VHDs and virtual machines. The only time I use Win2k8 R2 is when the product I'm installing specifically requires me to do that. So when... (more)

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple of months, you've probably not been able to escape the movie trailers, hype, and even SyFy channel (yes, SYFY channel..that should TELL YOU SOMETHING) specials regarding the Mayan "prediction" that the world will end in 2... (more)

If you want the full gory details, check out the .NET Services team blog post here. What follows below are some of the things that I think are most crucial to understand both for new developers and for developers unfortunate enough to be in a position of having to migrate a lot o... (more)

As mentioned in my previous blog post, you don't get full designer support on SQL Azure within SQL Server Management Studio. In addition, you don't get designer support for LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework, either. So what do you do if you want to take advantage of these awesome o... (more)

So after the long and torturous wait, you're now in the SQL Azure CTP and you are ready to get the ball rolling with your fabulous, shiny new cloud-based SQL database server. Now what? Well, the first thing you're going to need to do is create a database. To do that, you'll go t... (more)

Anytime a feature of a framework gives me something for free that I don't need to manually implement I'm a happy camper. One such feature of ASP.NET MVC 2 is jQuery client-side validation. The reason I like this is that unlike other jQuery frameworks, where you have to write the ... (more)

Anytime a feature of a framework gives me something for free that I don't need to manually implement I'm a happy camper. One such feature of ASP.NET MVC 2 is jQuery client-side validation. The reason I like this is that unlike other jQuery frameworks, where you have to write the ... (more)

Anytime a feature of a framework gives me something for free that I don't need to manually implement I'm a happy camper. One such feature of ASP.NET MVC 2 is jQuery client-side validation. The reason I like this is that unlike other jQuery frameworks, where you have to write the ... (more)

Anytime a feature of a framework gives me something for free that I don't need to manually implement I'm a happy camper. One such feature of ASP.NET MVC 2 is jQuery client-side validation. The reason I like this is that unlike other jQuery frameworks, where you have to write the ... (more)

Anytime a feature of a framework gives me something for free that I don't need to manually implement I'm a happy camper. One such feature of ASP.NET MVC 2 is jQuery client-side validation. The reason I like this is that unlike other jQuery frameworks, where you have to write the ... (more)

Barnes and Noble just recently unveiled their upcoming eReader, the Nook. On the blog of my non-techy alter-ego I've posted a comparison of the two readers that is entirely based on my own personal feelings of what is cool and what isn't, so take it as opinion and certainly not as ... (more)

You might be thinking, pfft, I'm never going to need to use Binary Serialization...that's old school. And you might be right, but think about this: Azure Storage charges you by how much you're storing and some aspects of Azure also charge you based on the bandwidth consumed. Do y... (more)

Templated Helpers are one of the new features in ASP.NET MVC 2. The other day, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 came out and some of you may have noticed that it comes pre-equipped with a beta release of ASP.NET MVC 2. In short a templated helper is a way of using various combinations o... (more)

The other day I ran into a blog entry from the Astoria team discussing the projections feature of the 1.5 CTP2 version of the product. If you're not familiar with ADO.NET Data Services (formerly codenamed Astoria), it's basically a layer that you can put on top of an Entity Data ... (more)

So apparently Kirk Cameron and a buddy of his are continuing their campaign of lies and outright stupidity because things like common sense, science, and cold hard fact threaten their fragile hold on sanity. Ordinarily I might on on a huge rant about this but everything I could s... (more)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is now available to MSDN subscribers and will be available to the public at large late next week. The list of stuff that is awesome and worth checking out in VS2010 Beta 2 is too long and ridiculously in-depth for me to cover here. Some of the big things... (more)

When we all build websites, usually we're concerned with figuring out how we're going to get the major entities into the view. We want to know how we're going to handle the shopping cart or how we're going to get the customer record onto the page, etc. But, one of the little deta... (more)

In the past, Windows Workflow Foundation hasn't gotten a (deservedly so) bad reputation for being full of needless bloat, overly complicated, and missing a lot of key things that make workflow productive for developers. As a result of that, Microsoft completely overhauled WF in t... (more)

A good friend and colleague of mine has put up a great tutorial that walks you through the process of creating a new "classic" ASP.NET Azure web application and converting it into a cloud-based MVC application. In addition, he shows you how to point your membership, profile, and ro... (more)

One of the double-edged swords of Azure is that it feels so much like building regular web applications. This is a good thing in that you can re-use so much of your existing skills, knowledge, and best practices and they will still apply in the Azure world. However, it is really ... (more)