We talked about it at ReMIX Australia, Angus Logan got grilled over when it will be put into the hands of developers and now the release is set, the Virtual Earth ASP.NET control will be shipped in the Windows Live Tools July CTP.

This is great news for ASP.NET developers. A proper ASP.NET toolbox control with support from Microsoft will allow simply integration into your projects and personally I think a cleaner integration. Critically the control needs to stay in sync with the latest updates to the Virtual Earth platform.

In other Virtual Earth news, Mark Brown announced the upcoming release of a “completely new SOAP-based web service” that opens up massive possibilities for those wanting to harness the platform in a RIA using flash or indeed more exciting, Silverlight2.

Additionally it looks like the staging environment is not far away, those developing commercial applications with Virtual Earth using the new client token system have had to develop against their production accounts to date.

And finally Chris Pendleton has the low down on another massive imagery update, this month 69.2 TB! Check out the 3 new Version 2 cities, Vienna, Seattle and Miami over at http://maps.live.com