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Network Analysis

3 posts with the tag “Network Analysis”

SocNetV v1.6 Released with a Working Web Crawler

Dimitris

The SocNetV project has just released its latest version 1.6. Binaries for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are available from the Downloads menu.

Revamped Web Crawler

The new version brings back the web crawler feature, which had been disabled in the 1.x series so far.

To start the web crawler:

  • Go to Network -> Web Crawler or press Shift+C.

A dialog will appear where you:

  • Enter the initial web page (seed).
  • Set the maximum number of nodes/pages (default is 600).
  • Choose the types of links to crawl: internal, external, or both. By default, the crawler processes both.

Web Crawler Dialog

How It Works

The new web crawler is significantly improved compared to the 0.x releases. It consists of two components:

  1. Spider: Visits the specified initial URL, downloads its HTML, and processes it.
  2. Parser: Scans the downloaded HTML for href links to internal or external pages and adds them to a queue of URLs (the “frontier”).

The spider and parser run on separate threads, ensuring faster execution.

As URLs are added to the queue, the spider visits them, downloads their HTML, and the parser extracts more links, continuing the cycle.

Crawler in Action

The process is multithreaded and completes within seconds, even for large sets like 1,000 URLs.

Results

The crawler creates a network of all visited webpages as nodes and their links as edges. By default, node sizes are proportional to their outDegree, making patterns visible immediately.

Crawler Output

From there, you can analyze the network using the SNA tools provided by SocNetV.

Analyzing the Crawled Network

Note: The parser searches for href links only in the body section of the HTML.

Explore and analyze networks effortlessly with the enhanced capabilities of SocNetV v1.6!

SocNetV 1.5 Released

Dimitris

A new version of SocNetV has just been released! Version 1.5 brings standardization, many bug fixes, and exciting new features. Packages for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are available from the Downloads page.

Notable New Features

  • Prominence Scores on Valued Networks:

    • A new SSSP-solver algorithm (Dijkstra) enables prominence indices on weighted networks.
    • SocNetV asks whether to consider or invert weights, depending on their meaning (e.g., cost vs. votes).

  • Standardized Centrality and Prestige Scores:

    • Scores are now standardized (0.0 to 1.0) where applicable.
    • If no standardized formula exists, SocNetV normalizes by dividing the original score by the sum of all scores.

  • Prominence Layouts Relative to Highest Score:

    • Visualization layouts (circular, level, and nodal size) are now based on the highest score in the network rather than theoretical maximums.

  • Skip Isolates:

    • Option to omit isolates when computing prominence indices.

  • Graph Connectedness:

    • SocNetV reports if the network is connected or has isolates and suggests fixes.

  • CC Drops Isolates by Default:

    • Automatically drops isolate nodes to compute CC scores, avoiding user interruptions.

  • New Datasets:

    • Stephenson and Zelen (1989): Network of 40 AIDS patients.
    • Stephenson and Zelen (1989): IC test dataset (5 actors).
    • Wasserman and Faust: Star, circle, and line graphs (7 actors).

Bug Fixes

The following bugs have been resolved in this release:

  • #1358678: Fix GDC calculation in weighted networks.
  • #379558: Force-directed algorithms produce poor layouts.
  • #1365028: Methods isOutLinked & setOutLinked do not consider relations.
  • #1365504: centralityInformation() should symmetrize the adjacency matrix.
  • #1366625: Clicking on an edge does not select the correct edge.
  • #1369171: Group IC calculation yields incorrect results.
  • #1371208: Incorrect power centrality scores.
  • #1364955: vertices() should report only enabled vertices.
  • #1369336: Pagerank prestige reports incorrect scores.
  • #1370528: SocNetV cannot build on non-x86 architectures.
  • #1364320: Remove SRS PDF and fix spelling errors in code.
  • #1364361: SocNetV does not remember the last directory used by the user.
  • #1378346: Cannot change size and value of a node.

Enjoy the new features and improvements! If you spot any bugs, please report them here. Have fun!

SocNetV v1.4 Released!

Dimitris

Today is a fine day to release another SocNetV update. Version 1.4 brings consistency to the application by fixing many long-standing bugs (e.g., #514264 and #713617) and adding exciting new features.

New Features

  • Node Size Layouts Based on Prominence Scores:

    • SocNetV can now adjust node sizes to reflect a selected prominence index score.
    • This feature supports all indices calculated by SocNetV, including Degree, Closeness, Influence Range Closeness, Betweenness, PageRank, Proximity, Eccentricity, and Power.

  • Support for UCINET Edgelist1 Format:

    • SocNetV can now import edgelist1 UCINET format, for example:
dl
N=48
format=edgelist1
data:
1 2 4
1 3 2
1 6 2
1 8 2

  • Updated Shortcuts for Node and Edge Removal:

    • Node removal: Ctrl+Backspace
    • Edge removal: Shift+Backspace
    • You can also click on a node and press Ctrl+Backspace to remove it.

  • New Dataset:

    • Freeman’s EIES networks are now included:
      • Multirelational mode: 32 actors.
      • Single relation mode: 48 actors.

Bug Fixes

This release addresses many longstanding issues, enhancing stability and usability. See the complete ChangeLog for more details.

Downloads

Source code, packages, and executables for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows are available on the Downloads page.

Have fun!