For one of our projects, we wanted a way to show a map with locations of "things." From a design standpoint, we did not want to have to modify the code every time the "things" changed or new "things" were added. While we could have put these "things" in a database and then written code to allow a user to edit the "things," we wanted see if there was a way to allow "mere mortals" to have full control over the "things" and to push off the maintenance of the "things" to the user.

As an experiment, we created an account on maps.live.com and created our own collection of SSG customers. We did this by looking up their addresses on the site and then adding a push pin. Once the collection was created, we then obtained the ID number of the collection, added a virtual map control to the page and wrote three lines of code to get the collection from maps.live.com and then imaged it on the web page.