Using nanodrop for analysing biological samples other than nucleotides
The Nanodrop is a generic UV-visible spectrophotometer. According to the manufacturer, the latest model can measure absorbance from 190 to 850 nm. Its dynamic range is also very good: from about 0.1 to about 60 in absorbance. Therefore, as long as you don't use an incompatible solvent, you can measure anything that absorbs in this wavelength range. I use it very often for purified proteins. It also works well for turbid suspensions (like bacterial cultures; reading optical density at 600 nm gives an idea of turbidity).

It is easy to use, and of course the low volume requirement is a big advantage. One drawback is that it won't let you fine tune certain parameters like a "real" spectrophotometer would allow (bandwidth, gain, etc.). But you can definitely get decent spectra for characterization of mixtures and concentration estimation of pure samples.