Faneuil Media

About a year ago we built a package that NYTimes.com ran as part of its transit strike coverage.

We’ve always thought the highlight of that project was a map of stories from commuters. One reader rode a stolen two-seater bicycle the length of Manhattan. Another was rapturous about a morning stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge. Together, the dozens of vignettes added up to an amazing image of that week.

Now, with a new version of Atlas, our free mapping tool, anybody can build a map with contributions from their readers.

Try it out. Go to www.fmatlas.com, build a map, enable user contributions and publish.

Your readers will be able to add points, comments, photos and whatever else they feel like. You can moderate contributions, and make your map into a full-fledged wiki by giving users the ability to edit any point.

The contributions feature builds on a lot of the work already being done with Atlas.

During the November election, The Cincinnati Enquirer used Atlas to map reader reports of problem voting locations. Over the holidays The Palm Beach Post and KCRA-3 in Sacramento mapped their readers’ best light displays.

Those maps were created by reporters entering data submitted by users. Now readers can submit all their information directly to the map.

There were a series of other goodies in this release. The most important is KML — we’re now publishing KML files for every map. That means it’s a snap to download your data. It also means Google is indexing your map.

We’re very excited about this release. If you check it out, you’ll see why.

We’d love to hear from you, and are happy to help with any problems or questions you run into.