While catching up on 2 months worth of email & blogs I came across this free e-learning.  If you go to the SQL Server 2008 - Learning Portal you will find a link to Collection 6187: What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 which is a collection of the following three e-learnings:

Clinic 6188: What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for Enterprise Data Platform

Clinic 6189: What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for Business Intelligence

Clinic 6190: What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for Database Development

I'm not sure how long these will be free.  Always better to check them out sooner rather than later!

Databinding to KML has to be one of the top requested features I hear when I speak to people about VE.  The good news is that I can now tell people YES when they ask about it!!!  The VE team released a Quick Fix Engineering (QFE) update to Virtual Earth that included some enhancements to the v6 map control (more here).  So how does it work?  The VEDataType enumeration has been updated.  All you need is a slight tweak to the same code you would use for GeoRSS.

map = new VEMap('myMap'):

map.LoadMap(new VELatLong(46.3081, -122.1928), 12);

var l = new VEShapeLayer();

var veLayerSpec = new VEShapeSourceSpecification(VEDataType.ImportXML, "YourKmlFileHere.kml", l);

map.ImportShapeLayerData(veLayerSpec, onFeedLoad);

I have not tried it out myself.  I don't have many KML sources:).  Try it out with yours!