We will add axis markings and titles soon, making these charts ready to use in a variety of network reports.  These histograms will also appear in the Dynamic Filters dialog to guide users as they select segments of the distribution to include or filter out of the displayed network graph.

Other updates:

1.0.1.110 (2010-02-03)

• The Overall Metrics worksheet now includes more information about the degree, in-degree, out-degree, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality, and clustering coefficient metrics when those metrics are computed. The additional information includes the minimum, maximum, average, and median metric values, and a histogram showing the metric value distribution.
• The “Convert Old Workbook” item on the NodeXL, Data, Import menu in the Ribbon is now called “Import from NodeXL Workbook Created on Another Computer.” This menu item can be used to work around the following problem: NodeXL workbooks created on a 64-bit Windows computer cannot be opened directly in Excel on a 32-bit Windows computer, and vice-versa. (If you attempt to do so, you will get an error message whose details include “could not find a part of the path.”)
• A Clear All Worksheet Columns Now button has been added to the Autofill Columns dialog box (NodeXL, Visual Properties, Autofill). Also, you can now clear an individual worksheet column by clicking a button in the dialog box’s Options column.
• Bug fix: On large-font machines, the buttons at the bottom of the Autofill Columns dialog box didn’t fit within the dialog box.
• Bug fix: In some circumstances, vertices were drawn below the bottom of the graph pane and were impossible to see. One such circumstance was when the selection was exported to a new workbook (NodeXL, Data, Export, Selection to New NodeXL Workbook). The graph pane in the new workbook acted as if it were taller than its real height, leading to vertices dropping off the bottom.

What social media data most interest you?  We are considering integration with web and wiki crawlers, and support for YouTube, delicious, and enterprise data sources like Active Directory (LDAP), SharePoint, and Exchange.

This release also improves support for images, particularly those pulled from URLS, like twitter or facebook profile photos!

Here, for example, is a map of the connections among twitter accounts that tweeted the “WIN09″ tag that was used in the recent Social Networks Summit at NYU (http://winworkshop.net/) The map illustrates the way the summit brought together previously separate clusters of people from the various disciplines that have been attracted to the study of networks in general and social networks in particular.  Size of the image equals the number of tweets that person created.

A refined version adds Edge Labels and color to highlight the different tie types in the graph: “follows” relationships and “replies to” and “mentions” and now scaled by “Followers”.

In both views, the high betweenness role of one twitter account is clear.

Release details below the fold….

1.0.1.95 (2009/09/28)

• When an email network is analyzed (NodeXL, Data, Import, From Email Network), the resulting graph is now directed. This means that the relationships (John,Mary) and (Mary,John) are no longer combined into a single edge with an edge weight of 2; instead, they are considered unique edges.

1.0.1.94 (2009/09/28)

• When importing a Twitter search network (NodeXL, Data, Import, From Twitter Search Network), you can now add a Tweet column to the Vertices worksheet.
• When importing a Twitter user network (NodeXL, Data, Import, From Twitter User Network), you now have some options for how edges get added to the graph. You can add an edge for each followed/following relationship (which was always done in previous versions), each “replies-to” relationship in the people’s latest tweets, and each “mentions” relationship in the latest tweets.
• Ditto for the Twitter search network, although in this case the “replies-to” and “mentions” relationships apply to the tweets that satisfied the search criteria, which aren’t necessarily the people’s latest tweets.
• Twitter search networks and Twitter user networks now add an Image URL column to the Vertices worksheet. The images are those of the people who wrote the tweets.
• Bug fix: In the Import from Twitter Search Network dialog box, the word “latest” was removed from the text, “Search for people whose latest tweets contain…” Reason: The tweets returned by the search aren’t necessarily the people’s latest tweets.
• Bug fix: When importing a Twitter search network, a tweet posted by a person with “protected” status in Twitter would bring the search to a halt with a “There is no Twitter user with that screen name” error. Now, such people are skipped.
• Bug fix: Using any of the NodeXL, Data, Import items in the ribbon failed to clear the Images worksheet before importing the new data.

1.0.1.93 (2009/9/18)

• You can now import a Twitter network of users who have tweeted a specified term. For example, you can create a graph with a vertex for each person who has included the hashtag “#chi2010″ in a tweet, with an edge between the people who follow each other. In the Excel Ribbon, go to NodeXL, Data, Import, From Twitter Search Network.
• When including an image in a graph, you can now specify an URL to an image on the Internet.
• When an image file isn’t available, an error message is no longer displayed. Instead, a small red X is shown in the graph in place of the missing image.
• Images can now be resized using the Size column on the Vertices worksheet. There are new options in the Options dialog box for setting the default image size. (Known bug: Changing the default image size doesn’t update the graph pane until the workbook is refreshed.)
• When importing from a Twitter user’s network (NodeXL, Data, Import, From Twitter User’s Network), a Relationship column is added to the Edges worksheet. This gets set to Followed or Follower.
• The Twitter dialog boxes now provide feedback on what they’re doing as they assemble the requested network.
• Bug fix: Attempting to get a Twitter user network that included someone who “protected” her Twitter identity would cause a failure. Now, that user is skipped and the rest of the network is obtained.
• Bug fix: There was a rounding error with very small numbers (on the order of 1.0E-22) that could cause some vertices or edges to always be filtered out by Dynamic Filters, even if the filters were reset to their entire range.

1.0.1.92 (2009/9/4)

• In the Autofill Columns dialog box (NodeXL, Visual Properties, Autofill Columns), you can now specify a logarithmic mapping instead of a linear mapping when autofilling Edge Color, Edge Width, Edge Opacity, Vertex Color, Vertex Size, Vertex Opacity, Vertex Primary Label Fill Color, Vertex Layout Order, Vertex X, Vertex Y, Vertex R, or Vertex Polar Angle. Click one of the Options buttons, then check “use a logarithmic mapping.”
• You can now import a network of Flickr tags related to a specified tag. Use NodeXL, Import, From Network of Related Flickr Tags. You will need what Flickr calls an “API key.” There is a link in the Import dialog box for requesting a key from Flickr.
• The Twitter import feature has been expanded. (It’s at NodeXL, Import, From Twitter User’s Network.) You can now import the network of people followed by a user, people following a user, or both. There is a new option for selecting a 1, 1.5, or 2-level network, and you can limit the network to a specified number of people. New columns are added to the Vertices worksheet: Followed, Followers, Tweets, and (optionally) Latest Tweet. Also, you can right-click a vertex in the graph pane and select the new Open Twitter Page for This Person menu item.
• Bug fix: When using dynamic filters, a filtered edge’s label obscured what was under it even though the edge itself was hidden.
• For programmers only: The IGraphDataProvider interface used by data provider plug-ins for the Excel Template has changed. The GetGraphData() method is now called TryGetGraphData() and it now returns a Boolean. (The original design failed to accommodate failures while getting graph data.)

1.0.1.91 (2009/8/19)

• You can now label edges by filling in a new Label column on the Edges worksheet. The Label column is hidden by default. To make it visible, use NodeXL, Show/Hide, Workbook Columns, Labels in the Excel Ribbon.
• You can now import a graph from a GraphML file. GraphML is an XML-based file format used by a variety of graph applications and libraries, including Pajek, “R,” and JUNG. NodeXL will import all edge and vertex attributes in a GraphML file, including those that correspond to standard NodeXL columns such as Edge Color and Vertex Size. Use NodeXL, Data, Import, From GraphML File.
• Importing from a Twitter network (NodeXL, Data, Import, From Twitter Network) is now more reliable, thanks to automatic retries that will occur if a request to Twitter fails.
• Of possible interest to developers: NodeXL now supports custom “plug-in” .NET assemblies that will import graphs from custom data sources. For details, see the IGraphDataProvider Interface topic in the NodeXLApi.chm help file and the sample implementation in SampleGraphDataProvider.cs.
• The graph legend is now more compact. (To show the legend, use NodeXL, Show/Hide, Graph Elements, Legend.)
• Bug fix: When importing from an open edge workbook (NodeXL, Data, Import, From Open Edge Workbook), columns in the open edge workbook that have the same name as standard NodeXL columns will be copied to those NodeXL columns. Before, a column named “Color” was copied to “Color 2,” for example.
• Bug fix: Your settings, such as those entered in the Options dialog box, are now stored in a single file in your local Windows profile. Before, each named NodeXL workbook got its own settings file.

1.0.1.90 (2009/7/24)

• When you import data into the workbook (NodeXL, Data, Import), you now have the option to append the imported data to the workbook’s contents instead of clearing the workbook first. Check or uncheck the NodeXL, Data, Import, Clear NodeXL Workbook First checkbox to control this.
• The Closeness Centrality graph metric (NodeXL, Analysis, Graph Metrics) is now computed much more quickly. For example, with a graph containing about 1,000 vertices and 1,000 edges, the computation time went from 31 seconds to 3 seconds, and with a larger graph containing 5,000 vertices and 8,000 edges, the time went from 63 minutes to 2 minutes.
• The graph legend is now hidden by default.
• Your settings for showing or hiding the graph legend and axes (NodeXL, Show/Hide, Graph Elements) are now saved along with the rest of your settings.
• If you autofill the X and Y columns in the Vertices worksheet (NodeXL, Visual Properties, Autofill Columns), the Locked column is no longer automatically set to Yes. Instead, the Layout (NodeXL, Graph, Layout) is set to None, which achieves the same effect but is easier to undo. If you no longer want the autofilled X and Y values, just set the Layout to something else.
• In the options dialog boxes within the Autofill Columns dialog box, there is now a “Swap” button that will quickly swap the colors or numbers you are autofilling.
• You can now change the font used for the graph axes. In the graph pane, go to Options, Axis Font.
• The Auto Refresh checkbox that used to be in the NodeXL, Visual Properties Ribbon group is now in the Options dialog box, reachable from the graph pane.
• Bug fix: In the Import From Twitter Network feature, the screen name and password were not being correctly sent to Twitter. This caused Twitter rate limiting to kick in even if your rate limit had been lifted by Twitter.

1.0.1.89 (2009/7/9)

• There are now X and Y axes in the graph pane. To show them, check the NodeXL, Show/Hide, Graph Elements, Axes checkbox in the Excel Ribbon. If you autofill the X and Y columns in the Vertices worksheet (NodeXL, Visual Properties, Autofill Columns), the axes will show the range of autofilled values. Otherwise, the axes simply show NodeXL’s full range of coordinate values (0 to 9,999).
• You can now export the NodeXL workbook’s edges to a UCINET file. The file format is what UCINET calls “full matrix DL.” Go to NodeXL, Data, Export, To UCINET Full Matrix DL File in the Ribbon.
• You can also import a UCINET full matrix DL file. Go to NodeXL, Data, Import, From UCINET Full Matrix DL File in the Ribbon. If you have a file in a different UCINET format, you will need to use the UCINET program to convert it to full matrix DL. Click on the “What if my file is not in full matrix DL format?” link in the Import dialog box for instructions.
• You can now export the NodeXL workbook’s edges to a Pajek file. Go to NodeXL, Data, Export, To Pajek File in the Ribbon. The vertex coordinates are exported, but no other edge or vertex attributes are.

My colleagues Derek Hansen and Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland) and I have just finished the second version of our tutorial/manual for the NodeXL social network analysis toolkit for Excel.

The latest version of the tutorial Analyzing Social Media Networks: Learning by Doing with NodeXL is now available from the University of Maryland Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information (CASCI) web site.  We will use this version of the document in our upcoming tutorial at the Communities and Technologies conference at Penn State University on June 24th.

We plan to continue to expand the tutorial to include a step-by-step guide to the analysis of several major social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, delicious, and flickr as well as personal stores of social media like your own email (if it is stored in a Windows Search Index found on most Windows desktops).  Our goal is to create an easy-to-follow guide to network theory for people who new to the field or who do not want to develop programming skills to perform network analysis.  We are focused on social media as a data source for social media although other examples are included,  like the United States Senate voting network that reveals interesting patterns in the connections created when votes are cast.  Using 2007 data it reveals which Senators are most likely to change party affiliation.

Your comments, corrections, and suggestions for improving the document are welcome.

Instructors interested in teaching classes about social networks are welcome to make use of both the NodeXL toolkit and the document to guide students through the core concepts of social network theory.

Here is the table of contents:

1) Basic: Getting started with NodeXL

Data entry
Showing the graph
Highlighting an edge
Importing an edge list

2) Layout: Arranging Vertices in the Graph Pane

Automatic Layout
Directed Graph Type
Updating the Graph Pane
Manual Layout
Preserving manual layout
Zooming and Scale

3) Visual Design: Making network displays meaningful

Vertex Colors
Adding Descriptive Data
Changing Vertex Size (and other properties)
AutoFilling Columns
Legend
Changing General Graph Appearance

4) Labeling: adding text labels to vertices and links

Adding Primary Labels
Adding Secondary Labels
Adding Tooltips

5) Graph Metrics: Calculating and visualizing metrics

Computing Graph Metrics
Saving a NodeXL File
Kite Network Example
Opening an existing NodeXL File
Overall Metrics
Vertex Metrics
Degree
Betweenness Centrality
Closeness Centrality
Eigenvector Centrality
Clustering Coefficient

6) Preparing Data: Merging Edges and Sorting to Label Data

SeriousEats Analysis
Merging Duplicate Edges
Sorting Data
Auto-Filling Data Columns
Formulas

7) Filtering: Reducing clutter to reveal important features

Dynamic Filters
Filtering by Autofilling the Visibility Column
Subgraph Images
Putting It All Together

Clustering: Identifying and displaying vertex clusters

2007 Senate Voting Analysis
Creating Clusters Manually
Changing Advanced Layout Options
Creating Clusters Automatically
Showing and Hiding Clusters

The Communities and Technologies conference is holding its 4th meeting in Penn State June 24-27.  This conference gathers a range of scholars interested in online community, social media, social networks, and mobile social software.  A paper “Analyzing (Social Media) Networks with NodeXL” has been accepted for publication in the conference!  Congrats to my co-authors!

Paper Title: Analyzing (Social Media) Networks with NodeXL

Authors: Marc Smith (Telligent Systems), Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland), Natasa Milic-Frayling (Microsoft Research), Eduarda Mendes Rodrigues (Microsoft Research), Vladimir Barash (Cornell University), Cody Dunne (University of Maryland), Tony Capone (Microsoft Research), Adam Perer (University of Maryland, now at IBM Research), Eric Gleave (University of Washington)

Abstract: In this paper we present NodeXL, an extendible toolkit for network data analysis and visualization, implemented as an add-in to the Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheet software. We demonstrate NodeXL features through analysis of a data sample drawn from an enterprise intranet social network, discussion, and wiki. Through a sequence of steps we show how NodeXL leverages and extends the broadly used spreadsheet paradigm to support common operations in network analysis. This ranges from data import to computation of network statistics and refinement of network visualization through a selection of ready-to-use sorting, filtering, and clustering functions. ]]> http://www.connectedaction.net/2009/06/08/2009-ct-nodexl-and-social-queries-a-social-media-network-analysis-tool-kit/feed/ 0 http://www.connectedaction.net/2009/05/28/coming-soon-from-nodexl-v86-preview-and-beyond/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=coming-soon-from-nodexl-v86-preview-and-beyond http://www.connectedaction.net/2009/05/28/coming-soon-from-nodexl-v86-preview-and-beyond/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 18:54:49 +0000 Marc Smith http://www.connectedaction.net/?p=1220 ++

Last week’s NodeXL meeting focused on the coming work items for the next release.  Four major items are lined up for the next few weeks.  We may publish a release once a few of these items are complete.

> Legends and axes with scale marks for the chart canvass.

This is part of our larger work item called “Make the charts ready to publish”.  A related work item to address this goal is export to a vector file format.  A scalable vector format will allow people to create graphs of arbitrary resolutions to fit their presentation needs.

> Export to XPS (which should make it possible to get our files to PDF with some 3rd party help!)

Since NodeXL is intended to support non-programmer network analysts we plan to add support for other network analysis file formats.  A leading example is the UCINet format which has the added virtue of holding many sample data sets that are widely used in classes and network course work.  If you have a network data file format you would like NodeXL to support feel free to comment here or on the Codeplex NodeXL discussion.

> UCINet file format compatibility

Improvements to the layout of complex graphs is a deep area of research.  A recent member of the NodeXL team, Janez Brank has proposed and prototyped an alternative mechanism for node layout, namely the Fast Multi-Scale Method from Harel and Koren. This method initially selects a small subset of nodes and lays them out; this initial layout is then refined in several iterations, with more and more nodes added to the layout in each iteration, until a layout of the entire graph is created. The cost function used to optimize the layout at each step is designed to reward layouts in which the Euclidean distance between nodes corresponds approximately to the length of the shortest path between them. Our developer, Tony Capone, plans to implement the design in the coming weeks.  We have not added a new layout for a while and those recent additions have been deterministic geometric layouts like grid, circle, and sine wave.  We have never added an alternative to the Fruchterman-Reingold force directed layout with which we started the project.  This is a big feature addition that should have a big impact in making NodeXL layouts more visually appealing and informative.

> Updated layout #1

We hope these features deliver a lot of value to our users and address the big themes the team is working towards: Scale, Clarity, and Connection.  We seek to make NodeXL perform against reasonably sized data sets, to improve the exploration and discovery of structures in graphs, and to simplify the import and export of data between NodeXL and social media network data sources beyond the email and Twitter support present in the application today.

Some other features that we have been considering include:

> allow image paths to point at web URLs instead of exclusively local files.  NodeXL allows pictures to replcace node shapes so long as those files are stored locally.  Allowing for URLs pointing to Internet stored images will make NodeXL better at browsing social media sites at the cost of potential performance issues as files get fetched over possibly slow networks.

> clustering support that allows metrics to be calculated for a cluster and for the cluster to have a constrained region on the chart.

By allowing users to calculate metrics within the bounds of a cluster instead of globally, as we do today, NodeXL will take a step forward in its support for time series and multi-modal network analysis.  Time slices of a network can each be placed in their own cluster.  Each time slice would then be treated as a separate network while being stored along with all of the other time slices representing the network.  Multi-modal networks could also be segregated into clusters and have metrics and layout rules applied to each separately.

Spatial constraints on clusters would lead to features that allow users to see and manipulate the layout regions for each cluster.  A usage scenario for this might be a network made up of teachers and students where the two type of nodes are placed in separate regions of the canvass.  This feature would allow NodeXL to take a step towards what Ben Shneiderman calls “NetViz Nirvana” by enabling a “semantic substrate” for networks.  The idea of a “substrate” is simpler than its name: imagine the way an airline route map uses the world map as a substrate for a network map of cities (nodes) connected by edges, lines, arcs, or flights.  The same map of nodes and edges might be much less informative if all the nodes (cites) could pull each other into a big clump the way many network maps do.  Plotting the nodes on the locations of their cities on the globe adds a dimension to the meaning of the network.  When networks are not geographic in nature the challenge is greater.  Still, simple constraints or substrates may be useful.  To find out, NodeXL will have work items that allow clusters to have defined regions that constrain the layout of the nodes within them.

Clusters imply a way to create and destroy a cluster and to add and remove nodes from it.  There is some complexity here: networks are not as simple as tree structures, like file systems, where the familiar [+] [-] metaphor for opening and closing a level of a tree breaksdown.  If every node in a graph had just [+] [-] controls does [-] mean “collapse all my neighbors into me?”  and does [+] mean explode all the nodes contained in this node?  How will users to a task like seeing two nodes that they know to be the same entity (Bob and Robert, for example) and want to mush the two nodes together into a metanode?  Drag and drop may have errors, so we need an easy way to pull a node out a cluster.  Limitations in Excel 2007 constrain the ways NodeXL can talk to the Excel un-do stack so this can be problematic.

> Spigots to connect to a range of social media platforms would allow NodeXL to serve as a dashboard for many forms of social networks on the web.  From your desktop or laptop you will be able to pull network data from a number of sources, perhaps integrating them to provide a richer map of your personal or professional social media landscape.  NodeXL now connects to personal email through the Windows Search client and to Twitter to get the follows network for a given user.  More support for more silos of social media are on the agenda: Facebook is an obvious priority (and there is a useful tool from Bernie Hogan to pull an edge list into several network analysis file formats), other sites of interest include LinkedIn, YouTube, Wikipedia, and enterprise social media platforms.

> More metrics: we plan to implement a short list of additional network metrics including hubs and authorities and HITS.  Additional global metrics will be implemented including:

• Geodesics- graph-level metrics such as mean geodesic and diameter.
• Diameter: largest distance between connected nodes
• Connected components
• Count of components of each size
• Dyad census: counts of each of 3 types of dyads, placed on the graph-level worksheet
• Triad census
• Network transitivity – proportion of 2 stars which close

> Tools for multi-modal networks: easy ways to transform bi-modal networks into single modes, for example taking the person to document network common in many social media repositories and transforming it either into a person to person network or a document to document network.  This is a chore now for NodeXL users and should be much easier!

> We are exploring ways to move parts of NodeXL into a web browser and web server architecture.NodeXL in the cloud is a topic of interest to the team.

> We have avoided any effort into 3D representations of graphs although the advacing power of graphics cards starts to make this option more attractive.

> Location and distance support: as more network datasets appear with location attributes, through the proliferation of sensors like GPS, mobile phone systems using triangulation or manual identification of location, there is a growing need to support geographic  calculations like distance, speed, and trail length.  Integration with web mapping tools could be interesting!

New menu items have been added to NodeXL in the v.85 release made available today!

These “Visual Properties” features are part of a larger set of work items intended to make it easier to manipulate and decorate a network graph in Excel.

NodeXL recently crossed 8,000 downloads! Thanks to everyone for the interest and support for the project!

NodeXL Version 1.0.1.85 (2009/5/21) – New update to Visual Properties menu controls for controlling the display attributes of network graph visualizations.

• The Visual Properties group in the Node XL Ribbon tab has been expanded. New buttons let you easily set a visual property, such as edge width or vertex color, and have the graph automatically refreshed. If you have a large graph and automatically refreshing it takes a long time, you can turn off the automatic refreshes.
• Turning off automatic refreshes also affects the Schemes and Autofill Columns features.
• The Edit Selected Vertex Attributes feature (available when right-clicking a vertex in the graph pane) is now called Edit Selected Vertex Properties.
• The Import Open Edge Workbook dialog box (NodeXL, Data, Import, From Open Edge Workbook) now automatically selects the first two columns in the selected workbook.
• Workbook columns formatted as Text, such as the vertex names, now include a comment in the column header explaining that the format must be changed to General if you want to use Excel formulas in the column. Why are some columns formatted as Text? To avoid unwanted automatic conversions performed by Excel on General cells. Enter “1-1″ in a General cell, for example, and it will turn into something like “Jan 1.”
• Bug fix: The Autofill Columns feature wouldn’t autofill the vertex Radius column in old workbooks. (“Radius” was changed to “Size” in version 1.0.1.81.) Now, an old Radius column is changed to Size when the workbook is opened.
• New source code release.
• New release of prebuilt class libraries.

The slides will continue to update as we change the user interface and add new features to NodeXL.

There has been significant progress in the NodeXL project!  We have just released version .84 that includes support for “schemes” that can set a collection of display attributes in a single click.  Along with updates to the menu ribbon, NodeXl v.84 is becoming a full featured platform for social network analysis in Excel.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/sets/72157617504025567/

Results include:

A paper has been written about the way the tool works and was taught and learned — it will be submitted for possible publication at the IEEE Social Computing 2009 conference in Vancouver this August 29/30.

An earlier related paper was accepted for publication at the 2009 Communities and Technologies conference to be held at Penn State University this June 23, 24, 25.  The paper describes basic steps for analyzing social media networks.

Eduarda does a great job demonstrating the ease with which a sophisticated analysis can be implemented via the NodeXL interface.

NodeXL is about to cross 8,000 downloads and has several releases in the works to add better tools for laying out a social network diagram.

Recently NodeXL crossed the 5,000 downloads mark!

I will present workshops on the use of NodeXL  at International Network for Social Network Analysis “Sunbelt” conference in San Diego in March 2009 and Communities and Technologies 2009 in June at Penn State.  More interesting are the classes being taught elsewhere that will make use of NodeXL!

The newest release (NodeXL_1.0.1.76.zip) adds key features for generating measurements of a complex directed graph.

NodeXL Select Graph Metrics Dialog

Developers can access these measures directly through the Metrics API.

1.0.1.76 (2009/2/18)

• For new users, there are now no graph metrics selected by default, and you will get a message explaining how to select them the first time you attempt to calculate graph metrics. This is to make the Select Graph Metrics dialog box more discoverable.
• In the Select Graph Metrics dialog box, some metrics are now marked as “slow.”
• Each graph metric in the Select Graph Metrics dialog box now has a Details link that explains the metric and how it is calculated.
• The graph metrics are now divided into groups.
• Graph metrics now get inserted near the left edge of the worksheets. They used to get appended to the right edge.
• For application developers, graph metrics are now available in a separate assembly. They used to be part of the Excel Template code.
• Bug fix: Saving the graph image to the clipboard or a file via the right-click menu in the graph pane didn’t work properly if the scale of the graph was changed.
• Bug fix: If an edge or vertex color was specified in the workbook, the opacity specified in the Options dialog was ignored.
• Bug fix: If a graph had a self-loop (an edge connecting a vertex to itself), switching to and from another workbook caused an error. (The first line of the error message was “at WpfGraphicsUtil.GetFarthestRectangleEdge…”)

As we just crossed the 5,000 download milestone, it seems time for the next phase in the evolution of all software projects: t-shirts.

We need an image, logo, or design that best reflects the NodeXL project and we would like your help!  If you have ideas, sketches or screen shots that you think could become a good logo for the project, please post them here!

We will pick among the best submissions and award a *FREE* copy of the 5th Edition of Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction by Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant to the one that inspires a logo for the project.

Designing the User Interface - 5th Edition

Submissions can be posted to the comments here or the discussion board on the NodeXL Codeplex Site at http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl

Thanks!

Please visit http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl for the add-in and the source code for the application.

Key features in NodeXL:

> Import data from existing spreadsheets and other network analysis application file formats
> Import data from email reply networks on systems with Windows Search and local stores of email
> Twitter API: pull twitter networks into NodeXL for exploration
> Merge duplicate edges from imported edge lists
> Calculate degree, clustering, and betweenness measures
> Generate subgraph images for every node
> Create clusters for collections of nodes
> Decorate graphs with control over location, color, size, shape or image, and opacity of each edge or vertex
> Dynamic filters: use sliders to filter the graph by multiple dimensions of your data about each edge or vertex

NodeXL project group network

• Natasa Milic-Frayling (Microsoft Research Cambridge)
• Eduarda Mendes Rodrigues (Microsoft Research Cambridge)
• Tony Capone (Microsoft Research Redmond)
• Dan Fay (Microsoft Research Redmond)
• Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland)
• Adam Perer (University of Maryland)
• Cody Dunne (University of Maryland)
• Marc Smith (Telligent Systems)
• Vladimir Barash (Cornell)
• Eric Gleave (University of Washington)