Using jQuery to Consume ASP.NET MVC JSON Services

...for the last two years the alternative ASP.NET MVC framework has been drawing more and more attention from the development community due to its good implementation of the MVC design pattern and adherence to web standards and bleeding edge web technologies. For many experienced ASP.NET developers accustomed to Web Services especially accompanied with ASP.NET AJAX framework a natural question occurs: how to implement similar approach with ASP.NET MVC framework and its natural JavaScript companion jQuery?