Simple way to customize pushpins in Bing Maps for WP7

Having trouble finding a quick and simple way to customize and add images to pushpins? I came up with the following.

The stardard pushpin looks pretty bad, as you can see, it is just a black square with a pointing arrow.

The easiest way to get rid of it is to set the template of your pushpin to null.

Pushpin myPushpin = new Pushpin();
myPushpin.Template = null;

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Open Websites and Emails from a Windows Phone 7 Silverlight App

First,  make sure to reference the Microsoft.Phone.Tasks Library

In your XAML you can add a HyperlinkButton with a click even like this:

<HyperlinkButton x:Name="Email" Content="email@domain.com" Click="Email_Click"/>

Then use the EmailComposeTask class to bring up the mail client.

private void Email_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
EmailComposeTask email = new EmailComposeTask();
email.To = "email@domain.com";
email.Subject = "Thanks";
email.Show();
}

In a similar manner, you instantiate WebBrowserTask to bring up the browser with the provided link

private void MyBlog_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
WebBrowserTask web = new WebBrowserTask();
web.URL = "http://chrisrios.com";
web.Show();
}

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Why don’t we get digital property?

When I was teenager, there was suddenly this huge boom of CD stores in my hometown. They were more than anything places to hang out with your friends and people who share your taste in music. You would come to the store, have a chat and whatnot. Even if you did not buy a CD that day, it was very likely you bought a soft drink, a poster, or a piece of gum. It was the social network of its day in a way.

Then, manufacturers just as they did with cassettes recorders on its day, started selling upgrades to the CD players called CD writers or recorders. Soon, the bootleggers started charging a fraction of the price of the original because they only had to cover the cost of the media they were selling illegally. At this moment in time, lust for the sheen of money made consumers buy these bootlegs without a hint of the ramifications of the laws they were breaking. This managed to cause most of the stores to shut down and those that did not had to severely down size.

This is the part I think people do not get about stealing digital property. It is not that Lady Gaga is not going to make as many millions or had to downgrade from her Jet 4 to a Jet 3, it is the fact that Jet 3 does not need as many engineers to maintain the Jet putting them out of a job. All of the stores in my hometown paid rent, employed clerks, cleaning crew, and people for repairs. People do not seem to get that stealing digital property not only affects the artist but it also affects the economy, which affects you.

When you buy a book on your Kindle, you are not paying for text that cost nothing to be copied. You are paying for the effort, the work of the author, the editors, and even the people that clean the place where the editors work. If we don’t get this, it will get to a point where nobody will have any incentive to create anything as it will not put food on the table.

Copyright 2010 Christian Rios

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