I am still using ADO.net and very simple applications. ADO.net is more flexible. I got more control to translate sql into objects for the presentation. Moreover, for simple applications, that is too much for using LINQ or other ORM. This is a bit over kill. I still recommend you to consider to use ADO.net, that is classic and useful!

I am started to use Umbraco. But I found there is no form engine. I cannot create a contact form without coding. But I found there is a good contact form package, Cultiv Razor Contact Form. That is easy to use too.
You just need to this line into your template:

Code

Recently, I went a microsoft meeting. There were a number of people tried Windows 8.1 Preview. According to what I heard, although it will be not very stable in some situations, they are happy about the improvements, such as better sky drive and windows store. The most interesting thing is everyone mentioned the "Star" is back!

Today, I went to the Microsoft Brisbane Office. This is for attending Microsoft Bizspark Developer Camp - Windows/Windows Phone 8.
The meeting was great! We learnt Windows Azure, PhoneGap and developing Windows Store Apps. A ton of useful content. The most impression content was about Windows Azure Mobile Service. That is all around cloud-based restful service. You can use the restful service to modify the cloud data. Moreover, it has access control and corn job. That is quite good. The most important feature is push notification, it supports their push notification service, ios and google too!
Besides the technologies, they have some opportunities to share our experiences on development of Windows 8 and Windows Phone Apps. There is a QUT student who developed a Windows Phone App. This app is listed as the Top 10 app. He got under spot lights. He is developing a paid version, he believe this app can earn some money. That is interesting. It sounds like there are some successful stories in Windows 8 / Windows Phone 8 apps world.
After this meeting, I will spend sometime to learn Windows 8 Apps Development. This area sounds matured and a good area to exploring.

There are a number of open source asp.net CMS around, such as n2 and mojoportal. Even our company build an opensource CMS, AdvGenCMS. That is still in beta status. We just started to rolling out for some customers to test. Thus, we are still using some opensource cms. There are two of them I like most, Umbraco and Orchard. I love Orchard a lot, it is using MVC, Fluent Hibernate and Autofac. Moreover, the admin interface has a lot of functions and you can drag and drop the widget. That is easy to use. The major problem used too many opensource libraries. I need the system to be simpler.
So, I come to the second choice, Umbraco. This is widely supported, a number of companies are using this.
Moreover, the admin interface is very simple, nice and clean, that is a out of box solution!