Dear R-mappers and analyzers of spatial data,
just wanted to bring your attention to a new package on CRAN, RgoogleMaps,
which allows you to plot on Google map tiles in R.
The package serves two purposes:
(i) Provide a comfortable R interface to query the Google server for static
maps
(ii) Use the map as a background image to overlay plots within R. This
requires proper coordinate scaling.

It makes use of the Google Static Maps API and basically allows the user to
plot lat/lon points on a map in a properly aligned way without leaving R
(e.g. using overlays in kml or so).

As of now, the package requires rgdal, though that is only to load png files
into R. I have a second version that handles jpg files but as that depends
on rimage which is not currently compiling, its release is on hold.

I would ideally like to eliminate the dependence on any other package
altogether. If anyone knows of a small portable utility that reads in png or
jpg files and returns them as a RGB matrix, let me know.

Thanks,

Markus

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