Map Geek

I'm a computer geek. And a map geek. So I guess it's no surprise that I spent several hours playing with Amherst's spiffy-cool online map of the town while half-watching the Red Sox game last Saturday.

Nifty feature number one: anybody can mark-up a map with text, lines, and so on. You just poke the Markup tab (in the upper-right corner of the viewer), then either select markup that somebody else has created or poke the New link to create a new set of markup that anybody can look at.

I've created markup groups for this Town Meeting's articles 7, 15, and 16. Zooming out with the Zoning tab selected gives a good overview of how the proposed changes fit into their surrounding neighborhoods.

Nifty feature number two: you can create hyperlinks that will bring up the viewer with one or more parcels selected; for example, the URL for Article 7's parcels would be:

http://gis.amherstma.gov/public/Viewer.aspx?maptab=ParcelMap&Application=ParcelApp&targetids=3B-7,3B-8,3B-9,3B-10,3B-11,3B-12,3B-13

Phew! Try these links: Article 7. Article 15. Article 16.

Thanks Amherst GIS/IT folks for giving us such a great tool!