We just released v0.3 of taxize. For details on the update, see the release notes. Some new features New function iplant_resolve() to do name resolution using the iPlant name resolution service. Note, this is different from http://taxosaurus.org/ that is wrapped in the tnrs() function. New function ipni_search() to search for names in the International Plant Names Index (IPNI). See below for more. New function resolve() that unifies name resolution services from iPlant’s name resolution service (via iplant_resolve()), Taxosaurus’ TNRS (via tnrs()), and GNR’s name resolution service (via gnr_resolve()).

The rOpenSci project is a poster child for the fluid collaboration that has become increasingly common these days thanks to platforms like Twitter and GitHub. It has been really inspring to see open discussions take shape as rough ideas, which rapidly turn into prototype research software, all of which are now happening in the order of few days to weeks rather than months to years. The origins of this project itself lead back to a series of serendipitous conversations that occurred over Twitter three years ago.

One of the goals of the rOpenSci is to facilitate interoperability between different data sources around web with our tools. We can achieve this by providing functionality within our packages that converts data coming down via web APIs in one format (often a provider specific schema) into a standard format. The new version of rWBclimate that we just posted to CRAN does just that. In an earlier post I wrote about how users could combine data from both rgbif and rWBclimate.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Matt Sundquist from Plot.ly. Ggplotly and Plotly’s R API let you make ggplot2 plots, add py$ggplotly(), and make your plots interactive, online, and drawn with D3. Let’s make some. 1. Getting Started and Examples Here is Fisher’s iris data. library("ggplot2") ggiris <- qplot(Petal.Width, Sepal.Length, data = iris, color = Species) print(ggiris) Let’s make it in Plotly. Install: install.packages("devtools") library("devtools") install_github("plotly", "ropensci") Load.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of posts from rOpenSci’s recent hackathon. I recently had the pleasure of participating in rOpenSci’s hackathon. To be honest, I was quite nervous to work among such notables, but I immediately felt welcome thanks to a warm and personable group. Alyssa Frazee has a great post summarizing the event, so check that out if you haven’t already. Once again, many thanks to rOpenSci for making it possible!