A few weeks ago at MIX there were a number of Silverlight 3 announcements.  One new component that I don’t think got enough attention was the Virtual Earth Silverlight Control.  This essentially makes GIS in Silverlight more palatable.  To be fair, this isn’t the first mapping tool for Silverlight.  ESRI, the GIS leader, has had a Silverlight control for some time. More info on ESRI’s control can be found here: http://www.esri.com/getting_started/developers/silverlight.html.  

To get started with the Virtual Earth mapping control I recommend three things:

1. Watch the presentation from MIX - http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T34F.
2. Download the SDK from Connect - https://connect.microsoft.com/silverlightmapcontrolctp/
3. Check out Chris Pietschmann’s post on how to get the control up in your project.

So far, I’m very impressed on how fast the control responses and pulls data.  Do keep in mind when you’re using the control, the DLL is just under half a meg.  So you may want to consider pulling this dll in dynamically or having it be a shared library.

Virtual Earth Web Services

Tying the map control into the Virtual Earth services is where the money’s at.  The Virtual Earth Web Services in include Geocoding Services, Imagery Services, Route Services, and Search Services.  For initial prototyping I have been only interested in the Geocoding services, but if you’re looking for more go to the MSDN documentation to find out more.

In order to use these services you’ll need to register.  Out of everything so far, this was the hairiest part of getting things set up.  Once you register you’ll have to go through an approval process that can take a day or so. 

To get set up with Virtual Earch Live Services, see their page at http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/.