Atlas has just been released with a Go-Live license, so we now can use it on our websites. Woohoo !
“Atlas” makes it possible to easily take advantage of AJAX techniques on the Web and enables you to create ASP.NET pages with a rich, responsive UI and server communication.

I see a lot of potential when combining this with a map viewer, like Microsofts Live Local.

I have tried implementing Atlas in my Ajax demo on the SharpMap website, and it works great ! It's almost too easy :-)
I used Atlas for autocompletion when searching for cities, and for updating the cities-in-view list below the map.