Local data sources for GIS Map plugin?

Question

I am developing an ASP.NET intranet application that needs to have an interactive map interface.

There are some pretty neat Silverlight mapping plugins that I think could work well, specifically:

ArcGIS Silverlight API: http://resources.esri.com/arcgisserver/apis/silverlight/ DeepEarth mapping framework: http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth

There are no doubt many more plugins out there that will allow easy interaction between ASP.NET and the mapping interface (please suggest some if I've missed the major players).

My major concern however is using these tools with local data sources. What is the best option here? All I need is some basic satellite imagery of moderate resolution and some overlays of cities and country borders. Can I download a dataset of these images? I dont really care if they are up to date or not, so long as the photos were taken in the last 20 years.

I want to be able to use local data sources because external internet connections could be very slow due to the nature of the organisation's work, Intranet communication will always be much faster.

To summarise:

1.) where can I find a dataset of moderate quality global satellite imagery? 2.) Which web based mapping plugin will allow me to plug into such a data source?

If I can get something like the DeepEarth demo (http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth) but grabbing the data from internal company servers I would be very happy.

Answer 1

You can check out the free geodata listing at: - http://www.freegis.org/database/?cat=1

Or have a look at: http://downloads.cloudmade.com/

where cloudmade provides downloadable openstreetmap data converted to shape files.