Wednesday, 7 January 2009

Words into Art (2) - The DNA of Web

It's strange how one's ability to find alternative activities rises in proportion to the amount of proper work requiring attention.

Anyway, to follow on from yesterday's posting about the fantastic Wordle.net here's another cool site you might find interesting.

Basically, it takes your website or blog, analyses it, and turns it into a visual depiction of DNA.

Digital Lives, the blog you're reading now, looks like this:

Make your own here

If DNA is your cup of tea then you might like some photos I took of DNA samples, which I've posted onto my Flickr account. You can view them here.

I could see this being used by teachers of Maths and ICT, to show how data can be re-interpreted and presented. Either way, my blog sure does look pretty, even if in its DNA state its pretty unintelligible.


4 comments:

Laura Jayne said...

Oh, I love this idea. I am going to try it with one of mine. :)

TesoriTrovati said...

Where do you have time to find all this cool stuff? I will have to try that out with my website....once it is up an running. Shouldn't be long now!
Enjoy the day!
Erin

Sacha van Straten said...

Don't worry Erin. Once school resumes I won't have the time!

To answer your question though: I'm one of those people who when they're scouring the web and come across cool features, do their best to find out how something was created. That was how I discovered Wordle.net, while reading another blog (10,000 Shooters).

In this case I was looking for a group to share my DNA photos with, and stumbled across a group promoting the work of Web2DNA.

The academic response I suppose is that since I'm planning to study for an MA in Online and Distance Education this is all grist to the mill.

Glad you enjoyed reading about it. Have fun playing!

Sacha

Sacha van Straten said...

Quick addendum - I meant to write that the blog I was reading is called 10,000 words. Apologies.