Track your genome, share your photos, create a slideshow

Laura Blankenship — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:56:06 +0000

Today’s collection brings one of the most unusual sites I’ve seen–a genome tracking and sharing site.

23andMe is a site that allows you to have your genes analyzed. I’m not kidding. They send you a kit. You spit and send your spit back. They analyze your genes. You can see who has similar genes by choosing to share your information with others who’ve participated. In addition, your genetic code may advance genetic research, so you’re not only doing something of interest to you, you might also help forward medical science. Participating in the site costs money, as one might expect. They charge $399 for the kit and analysis, a small cost really when you think about all the information that might be gleaned from the process.
23 is a photo-sharing site–very similar to Flickr. In searching the site, it seems that it has a much more international user base than Flickr does. I use Flickr all the time and I seem to rarely run into photos by international users, though I know they’re there. Like Flickr, one can upload photos, friend people, create albums, and join groups. They also allow you to style your albums and photo area a bit more, choosing background and font styles. There are also story areas for blog post-like creations and in fact, the company makes photo blogging software called visual blog. The site is not as slick as Flickr. I didn’t find it all that easy to navigate either, but there definitely seems to be a fairly vibrant community there that does find the site useful. For educators, this site might be a nice alternative to Flickr, especially for finding international photos.
Finally, we have 280Slides, a site for creating PowerPoint-like presentations. Once you log in, you’ll see an editing screen very similar to PowerPoint’s. There are very few themes to choose from, so you’re kind of stuck there. But you can search the web for images and video on the fly and embed them quickly into your presentation. Once your presentation is complete, you can embed it in a web page, upload it to SlideShare, or email it to someone. It’s pretty straightforward and simple to use. If you don’t have PowerPoint, this might be a good tool to use.

Emerging Technologies Consulting » Photo sharing

Track your genome, share your photos, create a slideshow