Lococitato

Facebook Visualizer 1.15 Released

2012-01-22T11:52:00.000-08:00

We have just released a new version of Facebook Visualizer.

This contains a number of improvements:

Supports Firefox 9
Added support for Internet Explorer 9!
Works with the new timeline profiles
A new improved network layout algorithm

Support for Internet Explorer (IE) is something we have been asked for a lot and I am happy we can finally include it in a release. Support for older versions of IE is unfortunately not technically possible.

The move by Firefox to a rapid release schedule has caused a lot of problems for us, as every release seemed to break something. Hopefully by providing support for IE 9 we can mitigate this issue.

Of course IE 9 only runs on Windows Vista or Windows 7, so users on Windows XP, Mac or Linux are still at risk of rapid Firefox updates. Two things may offer some hope here. Firstly we will be looking at supporting Google's Chrome browser. Secondly Firefox have been talking about making a more stable long term release browser in parallel to their rapid releases.

One thing that perhaps will not be as immediately noticeable is the new network layout algorithm. However I am particularly pleased with it and is the result of a lot of research and effort. It is capable of laying out complicated networks with 100s and even 1000s of connected points very quickly and will take advantage of dual or quad core processors in a scalable way.

YouTube's new look

2012-01-05T12:37:00.001-08:00

In December YouTube unveiled a new look to (some of) their webpages.

This causes an issue for the YT Visualizer as the current version of the new look provides no way to see the lists of subscribers or subscriptions to a particular user. According to this post from Google a way to see these lists will be provided soon.

Obviously until then the YT Visualizer is not as useful as it should be, although it seems their are still quite a few pages on YouTube which retain the the "old style" look.

We are keeping an eye on things and will update the visualizer as soon as we can once the "new look" is completed.

Thank you for your patience.

Facebook Visualizer 1.14 Out!

2011-12-11T04:18:00.001-08:00

Facebook Visualizer 1.14 is now out.

This addresses 2 issues:

Copes with some user interface changes made by Facebook on the friends list.
Fixes an issue where Firefox could not be controlled on some PC's.

Thank you.

Facebook Visualizer 1.13 Out!

2011-11-19T02:20:00.000-08:00

We have released Facebook Visualizer 1.13 which:

Supports Firefox 8
Fixes issues where some friend links could be missed due to changes by Facebook
Fixes the issue where Firefox 7 could slow down during mapping

It is available from the usual place:

https://lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only/

Thank you.

Facebook Visualizer 1.11 Released

2011-06-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

We have just released Facebook Visualizer 1.11 which includes support for the new

Firefox 5.

Thanks.

MySpace Visualizer 2.8 out

2011-06-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

This release now supports using Firefox 5.

We have also fixed a couple of other bugs:

Fixes bug on setting top friends download only.
Fixes image download functionality after changes by MySpace

Thanks.

Firefox 5 break visualizers!

2011-06-26T01:42:00.000-07:00

It seems the latest release of Firefox 5 is not compatible with the MySpace or Facebook Visualizer.

We are looking at this and we are hopeful that it is a fairly minor (quick) problem.

Firefox 4 still works nicely as before.

Thanks.

Facebook Visualizer 1.10 Out!

2011-06-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

Facebook Visualizer 1.10 is now released.

This is a bug fix release, which fixes an issue we introduced in the last version which prevents Info and Wall pages being properly recorded for export and searching.

We are sorry for this one slipping through. Thanks.

Facebook Visualizer 1.9 Out!

2011-05-14T12:30:00.001-07:00

We have just released Facebook Visualizer 1.9 which:

Fixes a bug where some friend connections could be missed when analysing the page
Increased performance

Thanks.

Dealing with slow MySpace pages

2011-04-04T13:33:00.002-07:00

Since MySpace relaunched itself the MySpace Visualizer has had to use Firefox to correctly render the new pages due to the large amount of javascript now being used. This unfortunately means it is a lot slower than before when it could read the older more static HTML pages without the help of a browser. This would not be so bad if at the same time the MySpace relaunch had not slowed the whole site down.

The knock end on effect of this is to make the MySpace Visualizer slow too, so I thought I would share some tips on how to speed up browsing on MySpace (whether using the Visualizer or not).

With the help of some Firefox plugins it is possible to increase the speed by blocking out the adverts, videos and the more gratuitous uses of javascript.

First a little background. Firefox stores things like your preferences, history, and various add-ons in what they call "profiles", essentially these are simply directories on the disk where this information is stored. By default the MySpace Visualizer creates a new clean profile when it is launched, but for our purposes we want to use an existing one with some add-ons in. This is simply a matter of pointing the visualizer at the profile we want to use, to do this see this page which describes the process for the Facebook Visualizer but is essentially the same, http://www.lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/ProxyServer.html.

You can learn more about Firefox profiles in general here http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Profiles.

Now start up Firefox normally and add add-ons that make MySpace more manageable below:

Adblock Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

Flashblock: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/

If you are feeling brave I would also advise NoScript, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/, but this needs to be set up correctly for the MySpace website to still function. By default NoScript will stop all javascript from running, but it does let you know when it is blocked and gives you the option of allowing it. The best bet here is to install it and browse around MySpace allowing domains until the website works correctly (these domains may vary from country to country).

Once you are happy with your manual browsing around MySpace, you can launch the Visualizer, making sure you have pointed it at the right profile, and let it go. You should see a good speed increase, although it is still slower than before the whole MySpace relaunch.

Facebook Visualizer 1.8

2011-03-20T16:13:00.001-07:00

Here we are again another release to keep up with changes made by Facebook.

But we managed to add a couple of new features in as well.

So what's new:

Now works with Facebook accounts using https connections
Fixes a memory leak in version 1.7
Increased performance

You can download it from https://www.lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only/download.html as usual.

Thank you.

MySpace Visualizer 2.7 Released

2011-03-15T14:24:00.001-07:00

We have just released MySpace Visualizer 2.7.

This release:

Keeps up with some changes by MySpace
Waits until the end of a run to display error messages
Adds a View Errors report option.

It also has some improved error handling underneath, so should be more reliable.

You can download it from here:
http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/download.html

Thanks.

Facebook Visualizer 1.7

2011-03-08T12:24:00.000-08:00

A new version of Facebook Visualizer is out. This has the following changes:

Copes with changes Facebook have made to the friend list page
Only show errors once a run is completed or stopped.
Adds some extra information to csv export

It doesn't yet support https but that is in the works.

HTTPS And Facebook Visualizer

2011-02-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

Facebook have recently added the ability to access their site using https (long overdue really).

Unfortunately activating this option will stop the current release of Facebook Visualizer (1.6) from working correctly. This is something we will fix in a future version, in the meantime the simple workaround is to turn off https (if you have it on) in your Facebook account settings before you use the visualizer.

Facebook Visualizer 1.6 Out!

2011-02-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

I am happy to announce the release of Facebook Visualizer 1.6. This has a number of improvements and bug fixes, but just like version 1.5 you need to use this version in conjunction with a Facebook logon that
supports the new look profiles.

If you're not sure if you account does or not, log into Facebook and goto this link: http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/

This update

introduces a new network layout algorithm that is a lot faster and more stable than the previous one.
fixes an error finding all friends on some pages with only a few friends.
fixes an error exporting CSV files where some content contains quotation characters
fixes a fatal error in search logic that can happen when searching for a single character

Thank you to everyone who reported the bugs.

MySpace Visualizer 2.6 Released

2010-12-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

Finally we've caught up with MySpace's new look.

But the latest version of MySpace uses javascript a lot rather than boring old static HTML. So to support this the MySpace Visualizer now remotely controls a Firefox browser window to access MySpace and run all the javascript so pages can be correctly analysed.

The knock on effect of this is that although it works the Visualizer is now quite a lot slower than it was, but there are things that can be done to speed it up, which I intend to write up in another post.

You can get the latest version as usual from
http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer

New Style Facebook Profiles

2010-12-20T09:10:00.001-08:00

Facebook rolled out their new style profiles a few weeks ago. However it seems quite a few people are still on the old style. This is important because once you go to the new profile, you see all users profiles in the new style, and it effects which version of the Facebook Visualizer to use.

So if you are logging in to an old style profile (it still looks the same) there are 2 things you can do, you can either:

a) Opt-into the new style profiles on Facebook for your account at http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/ (there is a green button on the right to upgrade)

b) or you can use version 1.4, which you can download from https://lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only/download.html

I am sorry about this, we misunderstood how Facebook is rolling out the new profile pages, in my region we all seem to have been updated to the latest.

Facebook Visualizer 1.5 Out!

2010-12-13T17:11:00.001-08:00

This new release now supports the new look Facebook profiles that were unveiled last week.
You can download it from the usual place:

https://lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only/download.html

Thanks to everyone who reported the problems and for your patience.

Facebook Changes Break The Visualizer

2010-12-10T12:16:00.000-08:00

This week Facebook are rolling out changes to users profiles, which have stopped the Facebook Visualizer from working.

We are working hard to fix this and hope to have a new release out next week.

Thank you for your patience with this.

MySpace Breaking Changes

2010-11-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

It looks like MySpace have made some fairly large changes today that have broken the MySpace Visualizer.

We are working on it and hope to have an update soon. Thanks for your patience.

Facebook Visualizer 1.4 Released

2010-11-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

Well this is embarrassing, almost as soon as we released version 1.3 it stopped working.

So we have been working hard to release version 1.4 which is now available.

This at the time of writing works for us and is substantially faster than the previous version.

My apologies to everyone who installed version 1.3.

You can download version 1.4 from the usual place:
https://lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only/download.html

Facebook Visualizer 1.3 Released

2010-11-10T22:37:00.001-08:00

Facebook have made some changes to the website that has stopped the previous versions working correctly (they won't detect any friends from the friend list).

This release fixes that.

You can download it from the usual place http://lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only

Thanks to everyone who reported this.

Facebook Visualizer 1.2

2010-10-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

Is now out. This is a minor update that includes:

Fixes automatic Facebook language selection (where English is not the default) which was broken to changes made by Facebook.
Adds support for Firefox 4 Beta

You can download it from the usual place http://www.lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/

Having played with Firefox 4 now I have to say it is quite a lot faster on my PC when interacting with the visualizer. I am looking forward to the release.

Thanks.

YT Visualizer 1.4 out

2010-09-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

It is time for YT Visualizer to get some maintenance updates.

This release addresses the following:

Fixes issue where an incorrect image could be displayed for a profile
Fixes issues where the Visualizer would not work correctly in non-English speaking countries
Adds a remove license option, so licenses can be transferred between PCs

I hope you enjoy it.

MySpace Visualizer 2.5 Out!

2010-08-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

Another release of MySpace Visualizer 2 to keep up with changes from MySpace as well as fixing a few minor bugs.

Specifically:

Fixes blog downloads which were broken by MySpace changes.
Fixes an issue where a profiles images could be downloaded long after profile data.
Fixes an issue where an empty (0 kb) photo file on a profile could get the visualizer into an infinite loop.

Download it from the usual place http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/

MySpace are currently trying out a new profile version in beta, this current release does not fully support it and will warn you about it any problems with it. This will be the subject of another release in the near future.

Facebook Visualizer 1.1

2010-08-22T13:47:00.001-07:00

A small update to the Facebook Visualizer is now out.

It makes the following changes:

Fixes a problem displaying the correct colours for the profile genders when using US language settings.
Decreases the processor load when displaying large networks.
Adds an option to remove a license so it can be used on other PCs.

Thank you.

AIDE

2010-08-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to say that the newly formed Appalachian Institute of Digital Evidence (AIDE) based in Marshall University in the US are using our products in their casework laboratory operations and training seminars.

AIDE is a non-profit, federally grant funded organization dedicated to serving the professionals and students of the legal, technical and business communities that work with digital evidence.

I think the work they are doing is important and I wish them well.

MySpace Visualizer 2.4 Out!

2010-07-22T14:42:00.001-07:00

This fixes problems introduced by MySpace changes a couple of days ago, where the visualizer would fail in "All Friends" mode.

You can download it from the usual place

http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/download.html

Other than that it's pretty much the same as before.

Thanks.

Facebook Visualizer gets to 1.0

2010-07-07T14:03:00.000-07:00

At last after an age Facebook Visualizer has got to version 1.0

The only different between this and the last release candidate is a fix for a fairly rare bug caused by a race condition that could pop up a "Selenium Exception" error.

Just to be clear all licenses purchased during the beta period will be valid for the version 1.x series.

As usual you can download it from:

https://www.lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only/

You may also notice our new login screens and account management on the website.

My thanks to everyone who has helped test this and reported bugs or suggestions.

Facebook Visualizer 0.14 Released

2010-06-06T13:43:00.000-07:00

Another and hopefully the last release candidate for version 1.0.

This fixes a possible timing bug in detection of public friend lists and increases the speed of mapping.

You can get it at the usual place:

http://www.lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/

Thank you all for your patience.

Facebook Visualizer 0.13 Released

2010-05-17T04:03:00.000-07:00

So another release candidate for Facebook Visualizer. (And yes we've skipped a version number)

The changes in this release are:

Changes the way friends lists are explored to avoid a Facebook bug which limits the maximum to 400
Improves the search algorithm
Allows the page time out to be set ( under the Download Settings menu option )

Thanks to everyone who has been testing the application.

Facebook Visualizer 0.11 Release Candidate

2010-05-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

We have just released Facebook Visualizer 0.11 on our website. We consider this to be nearly production quality so it is a release candidate for version 1.0.

The following bug fixes and enhancements have been made:

Fixes a bug where Suggested Friends can be misidentified as friend links
Fixes a bug where Friend Requests can be misidentified as friend links
Fixes a bug where the Visualizer can get into an infinite loop when mapping some profiles of the logged in user
Fixes a few typos
Adds a feature to automatically stop mapping once all the friends of the target profile have been analysed
Adds an error log export feature, so errors and warnings can be viewed for any network

You can download it from the usual place
https://www.lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only/download.html

Thanks to everyone who has made suggestions or reported bugs.

Facebook Visualizer 0.9

2010-04-09T08:48:00.000-07:00

Is now out.

This fixes a nasty bug that could happen on the odd profile where friends could be incorrectly assigned.

It also now automatically sets the language settings on Facebook to one the visualizer can work with (English) if they are set to something else.

I would strongly advice all users to upgrade.

Thanks.

Facebook Visualizer 0.8 Out

2010-03-22T15:49:00.000-07:00

Another beta release, this fixes a few bugs and introduces a few new features.

Fixes the bug where friends were not being detected on the account logged in with
Introduces new ways of drawing edges from visible nodes to nodes that are not visible yet (available under the View->Graph menu). The alternatives place less strain on PC processor/graphics cards.
Stops obviously wrong URLs from being mapped.
Upgrades the underlying database engine.
Tries to make limitations due to running without a license more obvious to users.

I would strongly recommend all users to upgrade. Thanks.

Facebook Visualizer 0.7 Out

2010-03-09T13:36:00.001-08:00

The latest Facebook Visualizer beta is out, this is playing catch up with some changes made by Facebook.

You can download it as usual from https://www.lococitato.com/facebookvisualizer/law_only/

Thanks.

MySpace Visualizer 2.3 Released

2010-02-06T06:12:00.000-08:00

This fixes a couple of bugs:

Fixes and issue when mapping "All Friends" which was failing due to MySpace changes
Fixes a crash that could happen when there is no network connection

Pick it up at the usual place http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/

Thanks.

Facebook Visualizer Beta!

2010-01-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

Later than planned, but is that not always the case, we have a beta release of Facebook Visualizer.

Facebook Visualizer is tool for visualizing the connections between users on Facebook. It is restricted to law enforcement use only.

As usual it is free to download and use, but to save the networks or export the profile information to csv requires a license.

If you are a law enforcement officier and you would like to try Facebook Visualizer free, please email a request to us at lococitato@gmail.com from your departmental or agency email address.

Facebook Terms And Conditions

2009-12-18T14:31:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in a previous post we are working on something for Facebook, it's an interesting technical problem but there is another issue.

In their terms and conditions, section 3.2, they stipulate:

You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.

Now I understand Facebook have a responsibility to protect their users data, however I am not sure there is any difference between a human looking at somebodies public profile and say making notes, or a program pulling it down and saving the data. Particularly when you can if you were so disposed hire an army of gold farmers through a service like Mechanical Turk to collect the data manually. From a technical point of view, trying to limit electronic information publically available on the internet to be only read by humans seems futile to me.

That point aside, I think there is still a large grey area relating to how law enforcement agencies use the internet and in particular social networking sites. Mostly that grey area arises because the law enforcement community like most organisations are always just behind the next big technical or social innovations. While I am sure Facebook and MySpace cooperate with the police when it becomes obvious crimes have been committed or perhaps when a judge orders it, there is a huge amount of public information on these sites that can be used and is often exploited more by criminal elements than the police.

I know our MySpace Visualizer product, which accesses only public information, has in a small way helped catch criminals, find missing persons and rescue minors from abuse. I can see no reason why a similar tool on Facebook would do any less.

This section in the terms and conditions would bother me less, if Facebook had not proven they are quite happy to suspend users for accessing their own data using automated means by suspending Robert Scobl e. To be fair they did reinstate him in the end.

So what does this mean for our Facebook Mapper application. Well I think to be safe that anyone who uses it, should contact Facebook before doing so and see if you can get permission. I cannot speak for Facebook, but I suspect if that request comes from a law enforcement officier there's a reasonable chance they will allow it. This in turn makes me think that perhaps this application should only be released to the law enforcement community, mostly to minimise the chance of Facebook deciding to put us out of business.

I would welcome your opinions and suggestions on this. To some extent it is moot until we have a finished working application, but at some point a decision has to be made. I think a product like this has a value beyond (a rather small) profit so I want to release it. I just need to work out how.

Facebook Network Mapper

2009-12-18T14:23:00.000-08:00

We get many requests for a network visualizer that works on Facebook and we have been working on one.
I had hoped to have a beta version out this year. Unfortunately we have hit a few problems and this is not going to be possible. I do hope to get something out to interested parties in the new year though, so my apologies and thanks for your patience.

MySpace Visualizer 2.2 Out

2009-11-29T11:41:00.000-08:00

At last version 2 makes it to production quality. Thanks to everyone who helped test the beta's.

Just to recap, what makes it worth upgrading to version 2 ?

Well:

Explore "Top Friends" or "All friends"
Download photos from profiles
Download blogs from profiles
Annotate profile points on the diagram
Location can now be extracted from user profiles where available
Improved search of profiles and blogs
Export all photos from a profile
Export all blogs from a profile
Export complete details about the entire network
Change how visible a profile point is on the network. i.e. how far do you have to zoom to see it.
And much more

Look, it's just better, go on give it a go!

Download it from http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/download.html

MySpace Visualizer 2.1 Beta Out!

2009-11-18T12:49:00.000-08:00

A quick update to add some minor features and fix some reported bugs, this should still be considered a beta release and you can download it as usual from http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/download.html

Changes from 2.0 are:

Fixes issue viewing stored html profiles
Fixes Exit menu item so it actually exits (doh!)
Add Animate menu item under View, so users can start stop the network animation
Improves the default colours/colors
A few other minor usability tweaks

Thanks,

MySpace Visualizer 2.0 Beta Out!

2009-11-11T13:52:00.001-08:00

At last, after what seems an age the new shiny major version of MySpace Visualizer is available.

You can download it from http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/download.html as usual but at this stage it should be considered BETA

So what's new, well:

Explore "Top Friends" or "All friends"
Download photos from profiles
Download blogs from profiles
Location can now be extracted from user profiles where available
Improved search of profiles and blogs
Export all photos from a profile
Export all blogs from a profile
Export complete details about the entire network

And of course you can still view and export the saved profiles as usual.

I hope that's enough to convince you to try it out and upgrade (I really do...).

All licenses purchased from today will work with versions 1 and 2 of the MySpace Visualizer.

Customers who have purchased a license in the last month will be eligible for a discount which will be sorted out soon, but is not in place yet.

All the best.

YT Visualizer 1.2

2009-11-05T12:18:00.000-08:00

Is now released and fixes a couple of bugs:

An issue where the program could crash with a null pointer error when downloading some invalid images.
Resolves issues running the program on PC's using a Turkish locale.

Grab it from the download site http://www.lococitato.com/ytvisualizer/

All the best.

American Academy of Applied Forensics

2009-09-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to say that the American Academy of Applied Forensics in Charlotte, North Carolina will be using our Visualizer products in their “Internet as an Investigative Tool” and “Investigation of Social Networking Sites” classes.

These courses are open to law enforcement officers and other corporate investigative personnel such as bank investigators, examiners and security personnel.

Its great to see how useful these tools are becoming for the law enforcement community.

MySpace Visualizer 1.20 is out

2009-08-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, another bug fix release.

This one fixes a fatal error parsing some newer profiles which lacked a public Last Login date.

Sorry about that, please update to 1.20 as soon as you can, thanks.

MySpace Visualizer 1.19 Released

2009-07-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

Another minor update to keep up with some changes by MySpace, this fixes an issue reading user names on certain new style profiles.

Download as usual from http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer

Thank you.

YT Visualizer reaches 1.0

2009-06-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

Our new You Tube network visualizer YT Visualizer has reached version 1.0 and is available to download. Licenses can also now be purchased to unlock all the features.

Thanks to everyone he took the trouble to test it.

Sources And Methods: Visualizing YouTube User Networks (Lococitato.com)

2009-06-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

Kristan J. Wheaton has written a nice review of our YT Visualizer beta on his blog Sources And Methods: Visualizing YouTube User Networks (Lococitato.com)

There's lots of other interesting articles there too, I nearly forgot to post this link.

YT Visualizer beta released!

2009-05-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

We have released YT Visualizer, a social network mapper for YouTube. This works along the same lines as our MySpace Visualizer, and shows connections between YouTube users through subscriptions and friend links.

Download it here and try it and let us know what you think.

Holiday

2009-04-24T04:30:00.000-07:00

We are away on holiday until the 4th May. All the systems are currently running normally, so you can still buy licenses etc. But we may not respond to any emails very quickly :-)

Happy networking.

MySpace Visualizer 1.18 Released

2009-04-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

Hey well that was quick.
Version 1.18 fixes a possible fatal error introduced in 1.17

Whoops.

Download here.

MySpace Visualizer 1.17 Released

2009-04-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

MySpaceVisualizer 1.17 has just come out. This fixes a few bugs and adds a feature.

Now detectes when a MySpace account has been deleted or cancelled
Fixes a bug where an incorrect user image is shown if the user has not chosen an image
Fixes processing non-human profiles like MySpaceMobile

Thanks.

Bug Notice

2009-04-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

I have just discovered that the MySpace Visualizer will display a ParserError error message if it tries to map a MySpace page whose account has been deleted or cancelled.

This will be fixed shortly, thanks for you patience.

MySpaceVisualizer 1.16 Released

2009-04-11T12:54:00.000-07:00

Yet another update to keep pace with some small changes made by MySpace.

This ones fixes an issue with some of the newer profiles where an error like "stream closed" or "ParserException: Please contact lococitato@gmail.com" might pop up.

On a related note to try we are working on incorporating some fuzzy logic into the visualizer to try and increase it's robustness to changes made by MySpace. We will never be able to cope with all possible changes but I am sure we can make the product better.

You can download version 1.16 from the usual place http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/

Thank you.

MySpaceVisualizer 1.15 Released

2009-03-25T16:01:00.001-07:00

Another minor update to cope with some minor changes made by MySpace to their version 1 profiles.

You can download it from the usual place http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/

Thank you.

MySpaceVisualizer 1.14 Released

2009-01-03T01:07:00.000-08:00

This release is to cope with another change MySpace have made to their new profile types, which prevented the Visualizer from working correctly.

This new version will also now check for new updates to the MySpace Visualizer at start up.

You can download the new version from the usual place

http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/

MySpace Changes Again

2008-12-22T22:21:00.000-08:00

Oh dear,
MySpace have been changing their new profiles again, enough to stop the MySpace Visualizer working on them. It still works on the old profiles just fine.

I am currently working on a fix for the latest changes and the next version will have an update detection feature, such that it will alert users when a new version becomes available. This should help during periods like this where MySpace is undergoing a lot of changes.

To Delete Or Not to Delete

2008-12-17T12:42:00.000-08:00

Here is a puzzle. The MySpace Visualizer used to have an option to delete a page from the network, so you remove pages like "Tom" that crop up again and again and add little value.

Then some users pointed out that this made results less useful in when used as evidence in court cases, as the opposing lawyer could insinuate that the network had been tampered with. Most of my paying users are law enforcement types, so I removed the delete option as a quick fix.

This does mean the MySpace Visualizer can spend a long time mapping "Tom" and other high profile MySpace pages, which are not really what you are looking for and that these highly connected sites can drown out the connections you may be interested in.

So to try and address these problems, without damaging the applications use in court cases I am thinking about about adding the following features:

1. Allowing the user to set a "visible-ness" level on pages, so that
some pages like Tom would only be displayed if you zoomed in real
close. And others could be displayed all the time. ("Tom" could be
de-prioritised by default)

2. Allowing the user to click on a page and prevent any further links FROM that
page being explored further.

What do you think, are these reasonable features? Will it damage the weight of evidence in a court case?

Please let me know.

MySpace Visualizer 1.13 Released!

2008-12-11T14:19:00.000-08:00

Here we go again.

This release is to fix problems mapping MySpace's new style profiles, which were erroneously treated as private profiles, which Briearos Hecatonclese kindly pointed out.

You can download the new version from the usual place http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/

MySpace Visualizer 1.12 Released!

2008-11-24T14:20:00.001-08:00

It appears that MySpace changed the format of their URL encoding slightly today which confused the MySpace Visualizer. So this is a quick fix release that solves the issue, apologies for any inconvenience.
You can download the new version from the usual place http://www.lococitato.com/myspacevisualizer/

MySpace Visualizer 1.11 Released!

2008-11-20T23:20:00.000-08:00

Well that was quick. This is another MySpace Visualizer release. On some systems the foreign language characters were still not showing up correctly, this release should fix that.

It also exports foreign language characters correctly to csv file now using UTF-8 encoding.

However it appears Excel has trouble importing any non ascii characters from csv (sigh). At the moment I only have a couple of workarounds for this, which may help people, you could:

Use the free OpenOffice calc spreadsheet. Import the csv, then save into an Excel document format.

Open the csv file in Word, convert into a table, then copy/paste into Excel.

Neither of these solutions is that great but it might get someone out of a hole.

MySpace Visualizer 1.10 Released!

2008-11-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

Here we are again, another version of the MySpace Visualizer. This improvements this time are:

Non-English characters are displayed correctly now.
You can now use the Visualizer with more kinds of proxy servers. You can set the details of your proxy server by going to the Settings menu and selecting the new Internet option.
Fixed a bug where the first downloaded page would lose it's special colour (red by default), after saving and reloading a network.

MySpace Visualizer 1.9 Released!

2008-10-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

Here we are again another minor release of the MySpace Visualizer. This release adds one more feature and fixes 3 bugs.

Now the starting page node has it's own colour (defaulting to red) so it is easier to spot while exploring.

Bugs fixed:

Fixed a bug where loading very large MySpace pages could result in no friends being found
Fixed a bug where user names on some profiles where not being found
Fixed a minor bug on the colour selection form, so that the form colour selection updates correctly when "Restore Defaults" is updated

MySpace Visualizer 1.8 Released!

2008-09-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

Yet another MySpace Visualizer release.

This is a bug fix release that fixes 2 issues:

A problem where the pages with private profiles could be linked incorrectly
A problem where a saved network would not load, if it had blank images stored in it

I would encourage all users to download the new version.

Thanks.

MySpace Visualizer Used For Investigative Training

2008-08-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to say that SEARCH (The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics)
are using our MySpace Visualizer application as part of their training course on

MySpace Visualizer 1.6 Released!

2008-08-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

We have just released MySpace Visualizer 1.6, this includes a few minor enhancements:

Users can now set the maximum URL redirect limit. This has been a problem for users behind proxy servers.
Added a new form of license for demo/teaching institutions
Updated the version of Java installed by the installer

Nothing major but enjoy....

Property Heat Map of London

2008-08-22T01:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a new tool on our web page, the Property Heat Map of London. It displays a Goole map of London overlaid with colours indicating the average asking price of a house in that area. The hotter the colour the higher the price. It's a bit like a contour map, but more colourful.

You can filter on number of bedrooms and look back in time to see how things have changed. At the moment there are only 2 time points to compare, one in May and one in August but they will be added each month.

The data behind it comes from Oodle, which is probably the only free source of data for this type of thing I can find for the UK. So while it's great they provide this, I can't claim the data is comprehensive, but it is at least a guide.

We should be introducing similar maps for cities in the US soon.....

Server Move

2008-07-17T02:55:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know the site is now being hosted on a new server, with http://www.linode.com. (So far I'm very impressed with them)

Inevitably there have been a few wrinkles, so please bear with me if a few things are not quite right yet.

The new server will allow us to introduce some exciting new tools in the near future, more of them later.....

Warning! Price Rise

2008-07-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

As of the 20th July 2008, we will be increasing the license fee for MySpace Visualizer to £12.50 (about $25).

This comes after quite a few people have said we're not charging enough. Since that's quite hard to disagree with, we are going to increase the price.

Anyway you have been warned....

Server back up.

2008-05-19T13:02:00.000-07:00

Phew, www.lococitato.com is back up and running normally...

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Arrgghhh. Major server Problems

2008-05-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed our website is being redirected to a parked domain this week !

Apparently our service providers have been moving to a new system and in the process knocked out our website.

To add insult to injury this occurred just as we went on holiday, so I was blissfully unaware of it until today.

The good news is that the site should be back up on Monday.

Thanks to everyone who emailed us letting us know. We will be investigating what can be done to try and stop this happening ever again.

On holiday and server problems

2008-05-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

We're off on holiday this week, back on 17th May, so email response might be rather slow....

To add insult to injury we are having server issues, such that we can't process our orders automatically. Our normally very reliable hosts phurix have been very slow in getting round to fixing this (it's now over a month since I first reported it). This is not a problem normally as one of us can process the orders manually and that's fine, but since we're not going to be here I have decided it would be best not to take any orders this week.
The alternative of taking orders but being very patchy/late in delivering is just is not acceptable.

I hope you understand and I apologise for any inconvenience. We will be back as normal next week, and probably looking for a new hosting provider, so if you have any suggestions let me know.

Image Searching Going Open Source

2008-04-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

After being prompted by some emails regarding the licensing status of the
Search Images Using Pictures and Search Clip Art Using Pictures I have decided to open source the code that does all this.

I had a lot of fun developing these applications, and the algorithms behind them are my own experiments, but I have not done anything actively with it for some time. While there has been some very low level commercial interest in them I do not see that as being a realistic option. They are fun, very occasionally useful, but not world changing. So I am going to open source them and see what if anything other people can do with them. If nothing comes of it then I have lost nothing, but if someone does find them useful perhaps we can all gain.

Now I haven't decided on an exact license yet, but in the coming weeks I will be finalising details, finding somewhere to host the projects etc...

MySpace Visualizer 1.5 Released

2008-04-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

That time again, MySpace Visualizer 1.5 is out. This is a bug fix release, which fixes a very rare bug where the program displays an "Unexpected error:null" message box and shuts down when the user presses Stop.
I have only ever seen this once, so hopefully most of you will never see it all :-)

MySpace Visualizer 1.4 Released!

2008-04-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

It is that time again a new version of MySpace Visualizer is out.

New and improved features:

Map up to 1000 pages (licensed version only)
Improved rendering for larger networks
Minor bug fixes and improvements

MySpace Visualizer 1.3 Released!

2008-03-26T16:30:00.000-07:00

It's out now it has all the extra features I mentioned in my previous post.

Get it while it's hot!

We have also improved the error reporting, which will hopefully make supporting our users much easier for everybody.

MySpace Visualizer 1.3 Features

2008-03-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

MySpace Visualizer has not been out long, but we would like to get another mini-release out quickly, based on the feedback we have had so far.

Currently the new features we are including are:

Ability to delete pages from the network (Perhaps you don't want Tom in all your networks :-)
Improved Search visibility. We are going to show which pages matched your searches graphically, by making them bigger and possibility animated, so you don't have to step through the search list.
Adding Cut, Copy, Paste right click popup functionality to the MySpace URL text field.

If anyone has any other suggestions, comments or criticisms, please let us know. Maybe we can make life easier.

Tracking Viruses Through MySpace

2008-03-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

This week Brian Krebs the writer for Security Fix on The Washington Post contacted us. He had come across a trove of data stolen by a single keystroke logger, which appeared to be in operation between June and September of 2007. During that time, the criminal(s) responsible for distributing that keylogger ensnared some 10,000 victims, stealing more than 20 gigabytes worth of stored user names and passwords, as well as credentials passed when victims logged in to any sites that required credentials. He contacted us after using our MySpace Visualizer program which maps connected MySpace pages graphically.

Now there is no evidence to suggest that this virus used MySpace pages to infect PC's, but Brian was interested in how many of these infected users were related to each other through MySpace and other social networking sites.

So we started to run a few experiments. The first simple experiment was to work out how many of those infected are friends with others on MySpace,. This proved to be disappointing only 4 relationships showed up.

At this point we nearly gave up, but we decided to run a more complicated experiment and see how many of those infected are friend of friends of other infected users. This took a lot longer to run.

Finally we found that 71 of the infected users are contained within a network of 1148 total users. See the network below.

I am sure if we dug deeper we would find more connections, but what does this all this prove? Well we're all connected much more than we think. And what surprises me is not that viruses exist but that they are not more successful.