[R] launch of free R/Bioconductor Cloud Computing web-service

[hbolouri at caltech.edu]

We are pleased to announce CRdata.org, a free open-source menu-driven
file-sharing and Cloud-Computing web-service for R users.

CRdata  gives people without R expertise an intuitive graphical interface
to R, while R experts can use CRdata to share their algorithms with
non-experts, and to manage shared Cloud Computing resources for multiple
user groups.

Using CRdata, you can:

* Run your data analysis and modeling R scripts in the Cloud
	-No need to buy or maintain a local CPU cluster.
	-No need to install/maintain R and BioConductor.
	 CRdata automatically updates its R and Bioconductor libraries.
	-Minimize costs by using on-demand Cloud Computing resources.

* Share your data & scripts with your collaborators (or the world)
	-You can choose who you share your data and/or scripts with.
	-CRdata provides an intuitive GUI interface to your scripts.
	-Analysis results are saved as files and persistent HTML web pages.

* Make your publications easier to explore and reproduce
	-Deposit your paper's data, analysis methods, and models in CRdata.
        -CRdata provides user-ratings, usage-tracking and feedback tools.

* Provide tailored data & analysis resources to subscribers
	-Create CRdata Special Interest Groups with shared resources.

* Share classroom exercise scripts and data with your students
	-Put your instructions and notes into your CRdata HTML Help files.

If you are a programmer, we encourage you to download the CRdata (Ruby on
Rails) source code and extend it, for example to provide:

* Private instances of CRdata behind firewalls.
* Analysis resources via cell phones.
* Access to languages and analysis environments other than R.
* Computation on processor nodes other than the Amazon Cloud.
* CRdata resources integrated into 3rd party software.
* Data aggregation and filtering web services.

CRdata was developed in the Division of Biology at the California
Instittue of Technology by Rajiv Dulepet, Michael Angerman and Hamid
Bolouri as part of a collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Ellen
Rothenberg (Caltech), with code contributions by SparkTech Software, and
Bioconductor contributions by Dr. Martin Morgan of the Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center.

The development of this free, open-source community resource was supported
in part by NHLBI grant number HL089102 to Hamid Bolouri.

The CRdata Development Team (http://crdata.org/about)