Two new R packages of note:

First, I have recently released factualR, which makes it easier for R researches to work with data from Factual.com. If you want to pull Factual data sets into an ever-familiar data.frame then you're probably interested in factualR.

Second, I have joined the Segue project as a contributor. Segue is described as, "Parallel R In the Cloud, Two lines of code!" That means you get to use Amazon's Elastic MapReduce as a parallel backend for lapply()-like operations.

(Note that Segue is best for jobs that are computation-bound, not necessarily data-bound. Running a scary Monte Carlo simulation? Testing fifty parameter variations on your wicked timeseries analysis? Give Segue a try!)

Enjoy.