Fork out £30 a year for .NET framework?

[Pickle2]

So £30 a year, business expense - not a huge amount but grates a little as it is lining Bill's pockets.

Who promptly gives the whole lot to his charity. Chill, think of it as one less child with polio

[Shimano105]

Well I'll defintitely stump up now - maybe even offer double!

[NickFitz]

Not a huge amount but an MS tax nontheless.

Was thinking of putting up a portal to showcase ASP.NET stuff - to try out new ideas and to use a portfolio for new work.

Most of the respected geeks that write books etc. seem to have straightforward static sites with code that you download, so is that the way to go do you think? Or should I have a ready made portal with links to various apps?

I think you should definitely have live demos as well as code downloads. It may not be usual in the ASP.NET world (I haven't had to endure that misery for a while now, so I'm not sure who the big names are nowadays) but in the LAMP and front-end coding world, it's a given that you actually show stuff working, rather than just talking about it and offering a download.

All the regulars that publish books and speak on the conference circuit (in my world) do things that way. More to the point, it was doing things that way that brought them the opportunities to publish books and speak on the conference circuit