Toucan Navigate : Desktop App utilizing Virtual Earth

"Toucan Navigate is an easy-to-use desktop mapping software that lets you display your information over readily available detailed road maps and satellite images from Virtual Earth." Toucan Navigate -Create a meaningful geographic representation of your Excel spreadsheets. -Display Virtual Earth road maps and satellite images and overlay map (GIS) files created by your state and local government agencies. -Connect to a GPS. -Locate addresses and routes. -Collaborate and share your map views with others via MS Office Groove, SharePoint and SQL Server. -Work on/off-line. The best features are: It lets you use VE in on/off-line mode. Allows you to view ESRI shapefile data on VE maps. Allows you to view any excel type data on VE maps. They have a free version on the website: http://208.106.230.79/infopatterns/downloads/tn2007/TN2007Installer.exe It will be interesting to see what kind of licensing agreement they got from Microsoft. As far as I know - the only way to do this legally is by embedding a browser window in a desktop app. Trying to get to their tile-servers directly is not allowed (but maybe thats why they had to release a free version of their tool).