I got a part time job to suppliment my income, and it is rather tedious stuff
My first project is to make a map of Chicago and mark where all the Firehouses are located. There are like 80 of them
OK not a hard job but tedious.
I go to Google and insert the firehouse address and it pops up nicely on google maps.
Then I have to take my map of chicago in which is in bmp format and find the streets and put an X there.
I was wondering is there any software or website that could make this easier.
If I can enter one address on Google, why not two or more?
I know I sound really lazy but this is just the first of many “plotting” projects I will have for them, where I have to make location maps.
I was just wondering if there is a website or software that might do this.
And I know I should keep my mouth shut as I might be putting myself out of a job if I make it too easy 
You’re probably looking for a GIS (Geospatial Information System). There ate some quite good open source offerings for this category of software, however you might have to pay for your base maps, depending on what you need
Indeed, if you have the GIS (actually geographic information system) software, you can download a shapefile of Chicago streets and another of Chicago firehouses from the city’s GIS data website. It would take me roughly 30 seconds to prepare and email you a map of all of them.
If you have a spreadsheet of addresses to map, the easiest way is to use Google Fusion Tables to put all the addresses on a map. You can then zoom in and do screen grabs of various sections of the city. This has already been done for Chicago firehouses here.
A similar service is provided by ESRI, allowing a choice of better-looking basemaps than Google offers. The geocoding is not as robust, however.
You can also use Microsofts MapPoint product to do the same thing on your local computer.
Missed the edit window. ESRI offers a free version of their software (Windows only) that should be able to display shapefiles for you.
Actually, either term is valid.