We all know I love food, and the Triangle area. This guy might just win my heart as he combines the best of both - food news IN the Triangle! Each week he publishes "Friday Fun Food Facts" that list new restaurant openings and food news for the Triangle. As if you didn't need another excuse to eat out at one of the hundreds of Triangle troughs - he gives you about 10 more each week! Enjoy!

The few weekends my friends or relatives decide to make a visit to Raleigh the weather gets gloomy! I swear the last 5 weekends have been absolutely gorgeous!

Over at RaleighSkyline.com they have several more beautiful pictures of Raleightown in bloom.

Words by Simon Rogers

 Buzz 

Information is Beautiful

Data journalist and design whiz David McCandless’ Information is Beautiful blog is a treasure-trove of cool visualisations and mash-ups. His work has also been published in a bestselling book of the same name.

Flowing Data

If someone, somewhere, is producing a great data visualisation or analysis, Nathan Yau’s blog will find it. Yau has an unerring ability to unearth the best data visualisations on the web. He also produces graphics, and is a regular poster to the Guardian Datastore Flickr group.

Patrick Cain’s Map Blog

Canadian Patrick Cain is a ‘journalist who makes maps for the web’. Based in Toronto, Cain takes the city’s data and maps it – producing guides to everything from crime figures to World War I deaths and single parent families. A fan of open data, Cain has a record of demanding data from the city’s authorities using Freedom of Information laws.

Timetric

If you’re looking for time series economic data – and a nifty way of creating a sophisticated, embeddable graphic – this is the place to come. Timetric updates thousands of datasets every day and provides an easy-to-use interface that makes it very simple to create your own.

OWNI

Although a lot of the best data work is done in English, Paris-based OWNI is a collective of geeks and data freaks producing visualisations and apps that manage to be imaginative and innovative. The collective’s work on Wikileaks – which allowed people to interrogate the data – won a 2010 Online Journalism Award for General Excellence.

Guardian Datablog

The Guardian and its Datablog publishes raw data behind the news every day, and encourages readers to visualise and work with it. The site publishes its data using Google spreadsheets and Google Fusion Tables, and allows readers to search thousands of government datasets around the world.

Infochimps

The big brains at Infochimps have come up with an innovative way to find, share and sell formatted data. Both users and the site’s own contributors collate and scrape datasets so that they’re easily accessible. With big plans for expansion and lots of intelligent developers onboard, it’s definitely one to watch.

DataMarket

This brand new site combines an innovative data search function with bright and imaginative visualisations. It also allows you to create your own, download them and put them in your PowerPoint presentation or company report.

LinkedIn

It might be better known for its impact on the world of social media, but LinkedIn also has a hugely innovative approach to data. LinkedIn has made collating and using data a priority, with lead data scientists completely integrated into the commercial operation.

London Datastore

Governments around the globe are opening up their data, from data.gov in the US, via Australia, the UK, New Zealand and France. One of the best and most useful is the London Datastore. Created by the Greater London Authority, it publishes thousands of datasets with the emphasis on useful, live data, such as transport and economic numbers. Developers are using those figures to create interesting apps, such as Matthew Somerville’s live train map for the London Underground.

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• Simon Rogers

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