Software or webapps for a fairly simple mapping task - recommendations wanted

My wife, as part of her research work, wants to put together a city map showing where particular features and businesses are located.

The area under consideration is the lower half of Manhattan, and she is a historian so the time period is the middle of the nineteenth century. She wants to be able to map things like shops, theaters, boarding houses, etc.

She says that she would ideally like to map these features on top of a historic map, but that the street geography of Manhattan has changed little enough that a modern map would be acceptable, if that would make things easier.

My first suggestion, obviously, was Google maps, but she said she would prefer something where she doesn’t need to be connected to the internet, and where she can just have the map on her own computer. She suggested perhaps even just using a large image in Photoshop, and then using layers to put in the different locations.

I said i’d look around and see if there was something that might do the job better, and now i’m coming to Dopers for help. Obviously, something like ArcGIS would work, but i don’t think we want anything so complicated, or with such a big learning curve.

Any suggestions?

I think MapPoint may do what she needs. I am not 100% positive though, because the work I did with it involved programming software - we barely used MapPoint by itself.

DeLorme makes some products - I think the one I use is called TopoQuads - that might work. I think there is a Streets one which is city maps. Anyway, you can put push-pins and things where features are.

It isn’t layered though.

Thanks for the recommendations.

Unfortunately, those pieces of software are out of our budget, and probably have a steep learning curve, especially considering that she really only needs it for fairly basic reference stuff. If she really needs to go the whole hog, she can get access to ArcGIS for free through her university.

I think she’s going to have to put up with some sort of web app like Google maps, or perhaps install Google Earth. I’m pretty sure you can do a pushpin sort of thing with Google Earth.

One other possibility i came across was the Simile Exhibit project, which allows map mash-ups using a fairly basic HTML page and a simple javascript file.