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There are at least two ways to look at all the lay-offs that have been announced at companies around Western Virginia lately. One is to add up the numbers and see the sobering result. The other is, well, to look at them -- plot the lay-offs on a map and see where they are and what patterns or trends emerge that way about which communities are the hardest hit.

That's what our data delivery editor, Matt Chittum, has done on The Datasphere, our online center for all kinds of data about Western Virginia. Here's his map and a blog post explaining it.

Matt also was invited to talk about it on WVTF-FM last week. Here's his interview with the Roanoke public radio station, if you'd like to take a listen:

Whenever I walk past music writer Tad Dickens' desk, the odds are he's got a set of headphones clamped to his ears. He's not always jamming out to tunes, either. More likely, he's working on a podcast -- an audio interview that you can download onto your ipod.

In the past few weeks, you've seen a series of interviews in the Extra section he's done with musicians who have been coming through the Roanoke and New River valleys -- today, it's country star Vince Gill. Last week, it was country star Jason Aldean and New Orleans piano stylist Allen Toussaint. Before that, it was bluesman Derek Trucks, country singer Crystal Gayle, Dave Matthews collaborator Tim Reynolds and, well, you get the idea.

With each of those, Tad produced not only a print story, but also a podcast.

Want to take a listen? You can find Tad's most recent podcasts here -- and the older ones cataloged here.

For those of us without Adobe Acrobat or a Mac, creating PDF's can be pain -- and it often means outsourcing the task to another cubicle.

DrawLoop has done an excellent job rectifying this problem with their free, online PDF converter tools.

They have a webpage-based version and a Firefox add-on (no administrator rights needed!).

VDOT, through TrafficLand.Com, recently started providing live streams of traffic cameras in and around the Roanoke Valley.

Check out the streams on their Roanoke page.

Do you have trouble visualizing a product's size when shopping online? Check out www.sizeasy.com. The site operates on the wiki principle, allowing users to add measurements for products and compare their size to other objects.

Is Adobe's Photoshop too expensive, or too complicated? Try Paint.NET, a free open-source application that can perform many of the same tasks as Photoshop, such as layers and special effects.

ResizR is an easy-to-use Web site that does one thing: resize photos. Just upload your image, adjust the size, and do a save-as on the result!

Search giant Google has launched a new spreadsheet program that allows users to create, upload and share their data without downloading software.