I'm new to silverlight and would like to start porting my asp.net apps to silverlight UI. I would like to know the initial steps to create a silverlight app, using asp.net and telerik silverlight controls.
They have a wealth of information and tutorials to help you get started with, especially the series by Scott Guthrie. You'll be able to see very quickly that there is a pretty big difference between ASP.Net and Silverlight and how you can and should approach apps, especially considering you're looking to port stuff over. I'd say start playing around with the samples and tutorials on there before downloading the Telerik controls trial- once you're acquainted with the language then you'll really see the benefit and utility of some of the stuff in the RadControls suite. :)
Well, there is one book I've been using for reference that has definitely helped with the learning curve of Silverlight. They have a really good section on the different types of data access you can do from Silverlight, namely their coverage of WCF (my current favorite method). You can find that at...
Or... you can save yourself the trouble of ordering that for the time being and check out this blog by one of the Telerik people, it covers a simple setup for using WCF with Linq to SQL in Silverlight (this example being for TreeView):