Today, Microsoft releases Native Extensions 1.0 for Silverlight (NESL). It’s an open source Silverlight wrapper libraries, made up of COM automation run-time libraries to expose Windows 7 features through COM automation, and making them easily available to Silverlight 4 out-of-browser applications running with elevated trust.

This release provides access to Windows 7 features like:

• Take advantage of sensors like accelerometers, light sensors, compasses, GPS etc.
• Access content from connected portable devices like music players and digital cameras.
• Capture and create video from webcams and screen output.
• Use speech recognition and text to speech capabilities.
• Integrate with the Windows 7 taskbar (Jump Lists, Icon Overlays, Taskbar Progress etc.)

You can download this toolkit (libraries) including source code from MSDN Code Gallery.