Update (10/19/2009): Nexus has closed down! “We shut it down because we no longer have time to maintain or operate it. We’re working on a lot of new things, but they’re unrelated to Nexus.” The source code is posted on their notice at http://apps.facebook.com/_nexus_/ if you want to give it a try.

Think about the people you consider to be your friends. Chances are, some of them know each other, right? If you tried to write down how they were connected to each other, you’d get a form of “The Chart” from The L Word. You can probably guess that it’d be split up into a few groups; your high school friends would be separate from your college friends; if you’re in a greek organization, those friends would be clustered; if you did an out-of-state internship, those friends might be off by themselves, possibly because nobody loves them.

Chances are you may have seen an application that does something like this for you. It’s certainly not a difficult problem to imagine, given our propensity to visualize things. My personal favorite, by far, social graph application is the facebook app Nexus.

Why do I like it so much? First of all, let’s look at what it doesn’t do:

• It doesn’t spam your friends with wall posts
• It doesn’t spam your friends with notifications
• It doesn’t spam you with emails
• It’s not a quiz app
• It doesn’t use java

After that little list, I bet you’re surprised that it’s a facebook application, right? It simply reads in your friends and how they’re connected and renders them as a spring graph and allows you to easily and logically navigate this graph. The only downside is that the graphs are somewhat computationally intensive (read: time-consuming) to generate, so it could take several minutes to generate yours. The time to generate the graph scales in proportion to the number of friends you have and presumably the connectedness of your friends.

If you want to see my graph to get a taste, it’s right here for your viewing pleasure, no installation or login required. Some patterns for you to analyze: I have a high school cluster and a college cluster; most of my convention friends (Dragon*Con and MomoCon) are somehow linked to people I know from Georgia Tech. Even my friends from FIRST are somewhat precariously linked back to my Georgia Tech network.

Andrew Guyton
Computer Science major at Georgia Tech

Andrew has lived in three states in the US: Colorado, Florida, and (most recently) Georgia. He lived in Heidelberg, Germany for three years. His areas of interest are math and history, doubling up on the former in 11th grade as he set curves in his IB courses in the latter. He worked over a summer as a historical reenactor at a local museum, and but eventually chose a more mathematically inclined career path. He attributes this path to his “incredible” AP Calc BC/IB Higher Level instructor, James Bobbitt. At Georgia Tech, he entered as an electrical engineering major, but eventually switched to computer science. He is involved with GT’s student newspaper, “The Technique,” and has co-oped at GTRI since Summer 2005. His primary hobby in recent years is editing Wikipedia, especially articles pertaining to Georgia Tech and its history; as it now has several well-written and well-sourced ‘Good Articles’ and a few ‘Featured Articles.’ So while he has not performed any literary analysis or been able to employ his French studies, he has been given back to the world on Wikipedia through his love of history, and continuing my education with more math-based subjects.

When asked how the IB experience has influenced him, Andrew says, “If it wasn’t for IB, I probably wouldn’t have gone to Georgia Tech. While I didn’t get that many credit hours from my IB or AP classes, IB taught me how to do well in this environment, so the first few years of college were actually easier than my last few years of high school. IB also got me interested in mathematics, which has gradually led me to my current degree/profession as a programmer and computer scientist.”

Andrew formed a group on Facebook called, “IB Survivors.” Andrew remarks on his idea for the group, “IB has never had a very strong social network as far as I could tell. While there were smaller groups and organizations, there was no over-arching group for IB students at the time, so it struck me as an obvious step to form it and invite my existing friends from IB. From that point, I’ve been relatively hands-off, letting the discussions that occurred happen organically.”

Here is a link to his blog: http://disavian.no-ip.info/

I’m going to run through a list of add-ons I’ve collected that make my life easier, even if they tend to slow down Firefox. Thankfully, most of the extensions listed here are compatible with Firefox 3. Some of them are even carried over from the previous list, so don’t be surprised to see some duplication.

Everyday Extensions

These are extensions that I use or feel the effects of nearly every day.

Adblock Plus

• Description: Advertisement has gone up rather than down, so Adblock is as essential as ever. Easily block a range of domains/subdomains or even single images.
• Rating: 9
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Adblock Plus

Download Statusbar

• Description: Gets rid of the clunky download manager and replaces it with a sexy bar at the bottom of your screen.
• Rating: 8
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Download Statusbar

Fission

• Description: Moves the progress bar to the background of the address bar. Very awesome. You can also change the plain color to an image, although I just have it set to the default blue color.
• Rating: 8
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Fission

GooglePreview

• Description: Adds a thumbnail of a search result’s root level (e.g., the “home page”) to the left of the page on Google and Yahoo search results. Useful for identifying sites at a glance.
• Rating: 7
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Google Preview

Greasemonkey

• Description: Greasemonkey doesn’t do anything by itself. Rather, it runs scripts that other users write that target specific features of websites. You can do incredible things with various Greasemonkey scripts. If any of the Greasemonkey scripts farther below interest you, grab this extension first.
• Rating: 10
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Google Preview

IE Tab

• Description: Sadly, this extension is still needed – while Firefox penetration has been increasing, there are still those rare sites or applications that absolutely will not work with Firefox. Their numbers are slowly decreasing, thankfully. Fun feature: you can configure IE Tab to always load certain pages with IE instead of Gecko.
• Rating: 6
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: IE Tab

Locationbar²

• Description: This highlights the domain of the page you’re viewing for easy identification and allows you to click on lower levels as if they were links.
• Rating: 6
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Locationbar²

Nuke Anything Enhanced

• Description: Removes any given element from a website. Useful for removing ads or obtuse elements on a webpage.
• Rating: 6
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Nuke Anything Enhanced

Stylish

• Description: Allows you to easily make UI and website (user style) changes. Great with the right scripts. (See below for suggested user styles)
• Rating: 7
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Stylish

Tab Mix Plus

• Description: Allows you to customize several tab options.
• Rating: 7
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Tab Mix Plus

Tab Preview

• Description: Shows a thumbnail of a tab’s contents when you mouse over that tab in the tab bar. It took a while to get used to, but it feels fairly useful.
• Rating: 6
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Tab Preview

Occasional use extensions

These are extensions that I’ve found useful at one point or another, but tend to leave disabled.

/Find Bar/

• Description: Adds regular expression capabilities to the find bar.
• Rating: 5
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: /Find Bar/

BugMeNot

• Description: Allows you to right-click a username/password field and populate it with a respective set of credentials from BugMeNot’s database.
• Rating: 6.5
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: BugMeNot

Clear Private Data

• Description: Clears the browser’s cache, history, etc. Useful when developing web applications, as cached data makes it difficult to tell what your code is currently doing. It proved very useful in the development of the Georgia Tech Campus Information Mashup. I believe the Web Developer Toolbar also has this functionality.
• Rating: 5
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: BugMeNot

CoLT

• Description: Provides various ways of copying links.
• Rating: 4
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: CoLT

DownThemAll!

• Description: Facilitates downloading files on a page. Very intuitive, customizable.
• Rating: 7
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: DownThemAll!

Exif Viewer

• Description: Displays a photo’s EXIF data. Potentially useful if you frequently work with photography websites.
• Rating: 5
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Exif Viewer

Find Toolbar Tweaks

• Description: Various customizations of the find bar.
• Rating: 5
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Find Toolbar Tweaks

Firebug

• Description: Incredible live css, html, javascript debugger. Vital to web application programming.
• Rating: 8
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Firebug

Web Developer

• Description: Useful toolbar (the only one I have installed, in fact) that presents a wide variety of web development tools. CSS inspection, rulers, element inspection, etc, etc.
• Rating: 8
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: Web Developer

YSlow

• Description: Performance measuring add-on to Firebug. Yes, an extension to an extension. Useful to determine why pages aren’t loading as quickly as they should be.
• Rating: 7
• Link: addons.mozilla.org: YSlow

Stylish scripts

Most of these are fairly self-explanatory. For more user styles, go to http://userstyles.org/. Sadly, some of the changes I’ve made to firefox were directly to my user chrome file, but I’ll include those styles that replicate some of those changes.

Consolidate Firefox’s chrome

• Description: While not exactly a stylish script, this write-up is essential in explaining some of the many ways to optimize your browser’s look, feel, and operation. Instead of actually editing your user chrome files, you can use stylish to implement some of the more difficult changes they propose.
• Rating: 10
• Link: lifehacker.com: Geek to Live: Consolidate Firefox’s chrome

Add Bookmark Dialog: Show Folder Tree

• Description: The “Add Bookmark Dialog” (Ctrl+D) shows a tree view instead of a drop-down menu.
• Rating: 5
• Link: userstyles.org: Add Bookmark Dialog: Show Folder Tree

Favicon with Search Engine background

• Description: Nice visual effect; makes the favicon appear similar to the search engine icon.
• Rating: 7
• Link: userstyles.org: Favicon with Search Engine background

Greasemonkey – save space on status icon

• Description: Assuming you have Greasemonkey installed (you should!) this saves statusbar space and is more visually appealing than the default.
• Rating: 7
• Link: userstyles.org: Greasemonkey – save space on status icon

Remove separators between toolbars

• Description: This gives you a bit of vertical space, and looks generally cleaner, especially when you’ve moved your icons/etc up onto the topmost two bars.
• Rating: 9
• Link: weyland.be: Remove separators between toolbars

Sliding Menubar

• Description: This style is apparently installed in Stylish by default. I find it useful, although it can be a little difficult to get to the menu item you want without the menu bar re-collapsing when you’re a pixel off.
• Rating: 6
• Link: userstyles.org: Sliding Menubar

Combine Stop/Reload buttons

• Description: Another screen space-saving trick.
• Rating: 8
• Link: userstyles.org: Combine Stop/Reload buttons

Hide Back/Forward Buttons When not Needed

• Description: Another screen space-saving trick.
• Rating: 6
• Link: userstyles.org: Hide Back/Forward Buttons When not Needed

Greasemonkey scripts

The Greasemonkey scripts you use will be largely dependent upon what websites you visit. I’ll try to focus on the ones that most visitors will find useful. Note that some of these scripts may no longer work – the website it was designed for may have changed, breaking the script. Given the number of scripts here, and the fact that most of them are rather obvious, I’m going to go for a simpler format in this section. Most of these descriptions are copied from the script/plugin page.

All websites

• Check Range: Lets you check or uncheck a range of checkboxes by clicking the first checkbox and then Shift+clicking the last checkbox.
• Working Inline Mp3 Player: Add a player to mp3 links.
• Rick Roll Remover: Never gonna give you up… this script strikes out links to some common Rick Rolls so you’ll know better than to click on them. NOTE: This script has had an odd conflict with a Google map on another website I use. I just added that website to the exclude list, but when confronted with an unexplainable web bug, first try turning off Greasemonkey to see if that fixes it.
• Disable Text Ads: Disables inline text ads from Vibrant Media (IntelliTXT), AdBrite, Infolicious (lingoSpot), Kontera, Linkworth, EchoTopic, Targetpoint and MediaText.
• DarkPic: Removes the BritePic.com image handling service that some sites use to ‘enhance’ image viewing at the expense of their visitors’ privacy.
• Universal imagehost redirector: Bypasses imagehosts and redirects directly to the image where possible. Also rewrites links to point directly to the image where possible.

Amazon

• Collapsible Amazon: Collapse any section of the Amazon website by clicking on the orange section header.
• RIAA Radar Search: Search RIAA Radar for the current Amazon or Barnes and Noble CD. If found, show the RIAA Radar “Unknown”, “Warning”, or “Safe” image on the album; click the image to go to the RIAA Radar for the CD.
• Show Amazon Price: Some Amazon pages contain text that says “Click here to see the price (Why don’t we show the price?).” This shows you the price when the page loads without having to click.

Answers.com

• Answers.com Wikipedia Links: Rewrites links in Answers.com’s Wikipedia cache to point to the actual Wikipedia articles.

deviantART

• dAv5 Message Count (direct install link): Restores the (2D, 3C, 4J)-style message count to the deviantART interface.
• deviantTIDY: A set of styles and scripts to improve the layout and usability of deviantART. For full details, see here.
• Deviant Statistics: Fully Conclusive: When visiting users on deviantART, compiles a comprehensive list of useful statistics about users and displays them on deviants’ userpages.
• Deviant Statistics: Shows additional statistics about the Deviant. Look here to see a preview.
• deviantArt +Watch: Adds a link to “watch this deviant” on all gallery and deviation pages.
• deviantArt – Watching you?: Shows, when visiting a deviant, if it watches you.
• deviantArt: Bypass the MCF: The Mature Content Filter can be annoying at times, this should take care of it for now.
• deviantART – Misc. Customizations: Customizations for deviantART by DJC: alt. journal titles; alt. +devWATCH link; unhide hidden comments; “safe” message center links; remove gallery/favorites ads.
• no devADS: This script deletes some ads on deviantART. (Needs updating).

digg

• digg – add mirrors: Adds links to DuggMirror, Coral Cache, DuggBack and Archive.org wayback machine to every story.

eBay

• eBay PST2EST: Shows end of auction in local timezone. Also shows how many minutes left in auction.
• My eBay autologin: Automatically submits the My eBay login form (and checks the “Keep me signed in” box) if your username and password were automatically filled in (typically by the Firefox password manager).
• eBay style addon: This script will gray out all ended eBay auctions and colorize all auctions you are currently bidding on in the my eBay lists and eBay search lists.

Facebook

• Facebook AutoPoke: Automatically pokes back pokers listed on your home page.
• Facebook Autologin v2: Auto-login to Facebook for Greasemonkey 0.5.3, assuming Firefox is set to remember your password.
• Facebook App Nuker: Removes those pesky news feed stories about what Facebook Applications your friends are adding or removing.
• Remove Facebook Ads: Previously named Cipher’s Facebook Remove Ads. Updated to accommodate changes in Facebook.
• Facebook View Photo in Album: Adds a link above photos to see them in their albums, even if you’re not friends with the photographer.
• Facebook remove app requests: Adds an “Ignore All Apps” button at the bottom of the request list on the right in the facebook requests page. It also asks for confirmation before ignoring all application requests.
• Facebook – View All Photos: Places a link to view all photos of a user regardless of who tagged them. Also allows you to see photos of someone who has a private profile.

Flickr

• Flickr Search for Creative Commons: This script will force all searches on Flickr to return creative commons images.
• Flickr Bigger Quicker: Adds a ‘big’ link under each photo in any Detail view which goes directly to fd Flickr Toy’s “View On Black” script.
• Flickr Photo Page Enhancer: Adds links to different sizes directly to a Flickr photo page, generates html code to easily copy’n paste thumbnail & description, and automatically loads your 20 most used tags when you click “Add Tag.”
• Flickr Photo Prefetch: Prefetches the “next” page on Flickr in an iframe so it loads faster.
• Flickr Next Page Prefetch: Prefetches the “Next” page in Flickr to browse photos seamlessly. Idea from “Flickr Photo Prefetch.”
• Flickr’s Left Panel Sucks: Change the left panel on flickr for something useful: showing pictures from your friends or contacts.
• Flickr Group List Search: Allows filtering of the “send to group” list on Flickr by search terms. If you are a member of many Flickr groups, this plugin is a must!
• Flickr : Show all images by this user in this pool: If you click on a photo in a group pool, a link will be added next to the photo that will let you view all images by that user in that group’s pool.
• Flickr: Add referrer into comments: A small script that will add a small text at the end of your comment saying where you come from.
• Flickr Group Display: Display group membership next to pictures in your photostream for view and fave groups like topv-111. Helps manage memberships in groups based on number of views and favorites. When viewing your photos sorted by Views or Favorites, the script will determine which groups each photo belongs to, and display the group information next to the photo, to make it easier to determine which photos need to be moved to new groups. Also displays favorite-to-view ratios.

Google

• Google Image Relinker with Mouseover: View Google Image Search links in CSS Popup on Mouseover.

IMDB

• IMDB Pirated Version: An IMDB.com enhancer for pirates. The script is adding ajax and pseudo-ajax functionality to IMDB so you can search directly from the IMDB page for subtitles, torrents and http (Rapidshare, Megaupload, and other http hosts) movie releases.
• IMDB – add Rottentomatoes info: Adds info from Rottentomatoes to IMDB title pages.

Microsoft

• Gamerscore Summary: Changes the Xbox Live Achievement summary list to hide games where both people have no achievements. Also colour codes points to easily highlight who is winning. Also compacts the games to fit more in.
• Microsoft Points to Currency: Converts the MS Point values on xbox.com to their corresponding dollar or pound value and displays it alongisde.

MySpace

• Automatic MySpace Media Remover: Removes most media on MySpaces pages including the MySpace Miniplayer, Flash animations and Windows Media. Each media element is replaced by a notification box (in the style of the users MySpace) that allows you to easily toggle its visibility.
• MySpace – View All Friends+: Adds extra features to the “View All Friends” pages on MySpace. From the friends pages, you can: Send Messages, Add Comments, and View Pictures without having to go through their profile.

News sites

• New York Times permalinker: Get the permanent, no-login, linkable NY Times article.

Wikipedia

• Wikipedia Modified Warning: Shows a warning if an English Wikipedia page has been modified within the last X minutes (default is 5).
• Wikipedia Auto-Login: Automatically logs you into Wikipedia if Firefox is set to remember your password.
• wikEd: A full-featured in-browser editor for Wikipedia and other MediaWikis. Based on FCKeditor.
• Wikipedia undelete: Salvages deleted Wikipedia articles from archive.org, as you encounter them, and shows when and by whom the article was killed.
• Wikipeida ContribBlock: Adds the Wikimedia (wikipedia, commons…) user’s block logs to their contributions page.

xkcd

• xkcd caption: Displays the caption for xkcd comics.

Yahoo

• Yahoo Mail Ad Remover: Removes all ads from both the classic and beta version of Yahoo Mail.
• yahoo Image Relinker: Adaption of the great Google Image Relinker script for the yahoo image search.

Youtube

• YousableTubeFix: Removes ads and unwanted sections (configurable), allows downloading and resizing videos, displays all comments on video page, expands the description, can prevent autoplay and autodownload, adds a HD (High Definition) select, etc.

Autohotkey scripts

For more on Autohotkey, see my entry, “Introduction to Autohotkey.” Some of these scripts have changed slightly since I wrote that entry.

Go to selection in new tab

;;Firefox: Go to selection in new tab
#g::
   Send, ^c
   IfWinNotExist, ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass
   {
      RunWait firefox.exe
   }
   IfWinNotActive, ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass
   {
      WinActivate
   }
   IfWinActive, ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass
   {
      Send, ^t
      Sleep, 400
      Send, ^v {enter}
   }
Return

Increment

First, you need to bookmark the increment bookmarklet, and set its keyword to “i” (sans quotes). Then, every time you type “i” into the location bar, the current address is incremented. The real fun comes with runnning this userscript:

;; Increment
^#i::
    IfWinActive, ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass
    {
	Send {Ctrl Down}l{Ctrl Up}
	Sleep, 50
	Send i{enter}
    }
Return

Which will increment the page when you press (Ctrl)(Windows key)(i). You can use this method for other bookmarklets, as well. For example, Decrement could be (Ctrl)(Windows key)(d).

Save image using [windows]+[right-click]

Largely similar to my final case study in the Introduction to Autohotkey, I’ve tweaked it a little due to some websites having quirky behavior on right-click-save.

;; save image using [windows]+[right-click]
^RButton::
#RButton::
    Random R, 0, 100000 ; get a random number
    ;Msgbox %R%
    MouseGetPos,,,, Control
    IfInString, Control, Internet Explorer
    {
        Send {RButton}s{Enter}
        Sleep, 500
	;WinGetActiveTitle, Title
	;Msgbox, %Title%
        IfWinActive Save Picture
        {
            Send {Enter}{End}%R%{Enter}
	    ;Msgbox Duplicate file!
        }
    }
    IfInString, Control, Mozilla
    {
	Send {RButton}v
        Sleep, 600
	ClipboardOld = %ClipboardAll%
	Clipboard = ; must start off empty
	Send, ^c
	ClipWait, 0.6 ; wait for the clipboard to contain text
        if ErrorLevel ; ClipWait timed out
	{
            return
	}
	if Clipboard = download.php
	{
	    Send {esc}^s
	}
	Send {Enter}
	Clipboard = %ClipboardOld%
        ;Send {RButton}v{Enter}
        Sleep, 600
	;WinGetActiveTitle, Title
	;Msgbox, %Title%
        IfWinActive Save Image
        {
            Send {Enter}{Ctrl Down}{Left}{Ctrl Up}{Left}%R%{Enter}
	    ;Msgbox Duplicate file!
        }
    }
Return

Copy image location

Copies the location (as in http://example.com/image.jpg) of the image the mouse is over, with [Alt]+[Right mouse button].

!RButton::
    MouseGetPos,,,, Control
    IfInString, Control, Mozilla
    {
        Send {RButton}o
    }
Return

User reaction

This change has created instant opposition by many users of the site, generally on grounds of being “stalkerish” and “too much information.” These changes have given people a wake up call, so to speak, that the information on their profiles IS ACCESSIBLE BY ANYONE. That’s the way it has been. Facebook provides privacy options, and these people who are complaining about the new information are coming to the realization that they might not want to share everything about themselves on the internet. Then again, there are a growing number of people that don’t care what other people know about them.

People know I went to Dragon*Con, and that I have a girlfriend. So? People know that I wrote on someone else’s wall. The alarmists should step back and ask who really cares. Those particular notices should be eliminated because they’re not relevant. If I post a blog entry, however, I want all my friends to read it; I want them to be notified, because that’s the nature of blogging. If I put something on Facebook, other people are going to read it. If you’re not comfortable with people you know knowing something about you, then DO NOT POST IT ONLINE. It’s your own fault for sharing the information; Facebook is just the messenger.

What is privacy?

I do see sharing information online becoming more acceptable, though. The whole idea of “privacy” has drastically changed over the past ten or so years. We’ve become more comfortable with our friends knowing more about us; this is simply another indicator of that. A very obvious one, too. As in, you have to be pretty dense to not realize that Facebook, MySpace and other social networking websites are changing the way people interact. I wouldn’t know several very good friends if it weren’t for Facebook. I also wouldn’t know some old friends from middle and elementary school right now. There are probably downsides that I don’t realize, too. Like most things in life, it’s a double-edged sword. Why shouldn’t your friends know just as much about you as the CIA does? If you really want to advocate privacy, support the Electronic Frontier Foundation instead of attacking Facebook or MySpace.

Sounds like a good topic for a master’s paper… probably in a degree field such as Public Policy or History of Technology in Society. Analyze the effect of social networking websites in offline social networks; see how it changes the way people interact. Do they spend more time? How large are the offline social networks as compared to before, and how strong are the ties now, compared to before? Can one really be considered as “better” than the other? Are people who use these networks smarter and more successful than those who don’t?

What next?

Facebook is here to stay, and the information-sharing that people are reacting to is here to stay. If Facebook removes or cripples it, due to popular demand, then it will appear somewhere else, and it will eventually become accepted. Facebook simply used their excellent design skills to clearly present the information. I’d rather have it on Facebook than MySpace, as MySpace is more prone to hacking, and has poorer layout and privacy options than Facebook. However, this will be “web2.0″ and “cool” the next place it appears. Beyond that… is anyone’s guess. These websites will continue to evolve. Social interaction will continue to move online.

You will be assimilated. You will WANT to be assimilated, so that your cultural distinction can be added to our own. Resistance is futile. Welcome to the internet.