Two weeks ago I purchased a new computer, which came with Microsoft® Vista Business loaded. I haven't gotten used to Vista yet and I am not sure I really like it. That said I've always liked Excel, and Excel 2007 seems better than ever. One of the really nice add-ons is Microsoft .NetMap , which installs a template capable of doing some rudimentary network analysis. Consider the diagram below, which is my email traffic, displayed using a Fruchterman-Reingold force-directed spring algorithm.

The add-in analysed Outlook 2007 and identified all 532 unique vertices and the corresponding 994 unique edges that make up my e-mail network. It also identified the density of the network as 0.004, which is quite sparse given 1.000 is the possible score. Consider now the same network displayed in a spiral format.

I have not come across this exact display before, but it is not unlike the centrality displays of NetMiner 3. I quite like the visualisation, but prefer NetMiner 3. Like the spring diagram I am at the centre of the map. Now consider the Sine wave display.

It's still the same data but displayed in a different way. This time I am the left-most node on the diagram. It is an interesting way to display, but I think it is misleading. It gives the illusion of a step-analysis but it isn't!

I use Excel to capture data and for the early manipulation. The ability to do this in an add-in template makes this more efficient, but it isn't good enough to do serious analysis - for that I will stick to UCINET and NetMiner. I do like the ability to show sub-graphs or ego-nets in the data matrix. This makes for quick identification of nodes of potential interest.

All in all I would recommend the add-in, but serious analysis and visualization should be done in a purpose-built tool. Proper analysis matters!

Regards, Graham