Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:34:37 +0000

Let's face it, a good portion of an SEO Specialist's job is spent in competitive analysis. What better way to cut through the repetitive motion than with an automated tool? The First Scribe development team has built us a tool that saves us a ton of time checking inbound links and page saturation in Google. Now we're releasing it to the public!


The SEO Facebook Application by First Scribe

The SEO Widget is a fairly simple tool that saves us an amazing amount of time. The app is available as a true Facebook application and also via the SEO Widget 2.0 page on our website.

The application accepts your URL and any number of competitors. It then pings Google with the website addresses and returns the number of inbound links and current page saturation in Google.

Why go to Google repeatedly when you can fetch the list all at once?

• “Rome Was Not Built in A Day.” In this featurette, Director Ron Howard, Executive Producer Todd Hallowell, costume designer Daniel Orlandi, production designer Allan Cameron and numerous others discuss the importance of creating a real, believable world for moviegoers through costumes, cinematography, set design, location shooting, special effects, editing and all of the other tools that immerse the viewer. The interview material is all fine and good, but what’s really interesting here are the included composite breakdown reels which show the original plate, green screen, early renders and the final product for many of the CG enhanced locations. 17 minutes 30 seconds.
• “Writing Angels and Demons” Howard, Tom Hanks, screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp and author Dan Brown, among others, discuss the steps taken to adapt a novel which, chronologically, came before “The Da Vinci Code,” into that films sequel. Although still interesting, this piece just rubs me the wrong way due to the fact that everyone makes Dan Brown out to be the next William Shakespeare. Brown writes entertaining books, but they are not masterpieces folks, no matter how hard you try and make them seem like they are. 10 minutes 9 seconds.
• “Characters in Search of the True Story.” The principles again return for this character-focused piece. The actors discuss their roles, Brown talks about the casting and how each actor relates to his original idea of who and what each character was when he was writing them. 17 minutes 10 seconds.
• “CERN: Pushing the Frontiers of Human Knowledge” This featurette, part historical overview of the European Organization for Nuclear Research and part behind-the-scenes documentary, discusses the achievements in scientific research that the organization has pulled off, as well as the role that they played in the book and film. Howard again takes the reigns discussing how they took up the task of making the CERN-centric scenes as accurate as possible. 14 minutes 52 seconds.
• “Handling Props.” Fairly self-explanatory if you ask me, this featurette is about, what else, props. Howard and numerous others discuss various props and how the creative team worked hard to try and make them as close to what Brown describes in his book as possible. 11 minutes 35 seconds.
• “Angels & Demons: The Full Story.” Less informative and not nearly as focused as the other pieces in this set, “The Full Story” is your standard EPK fluff piece. It’s an overview of the production and much of what is discussed here is covered on the disc, and done-so far better elsewhere, in the various featurettes. Everyone is really congratulatory and overly happy, which is why I hate these things. They just seem so forced and artificial. 9 minutes 46 seconds.
• “This is an Ambigram.” What’s an ambigram, you may ask? Watch this short featurette to discover the mystery and mastery behind creating words, which read the same upside down as they do right side up. Pretty neat actually, as you get a glimpse of the designs used in the film. 4 minutes 46 seconds.