Gumby’s Toggles & Switches
So for those of you that don’t know, the team here at Digital Surgeons created a responsive CSS grid framework [...]
How to be a Digital Surgeon, February 2013
Whether it’s things we shared, wrote or were inspired by… here’s what made us tick in the month of February!
Twitter API Update: Why Marketers Need to Care
D-Day has come to start making decisions impacted by Twitter’s API. While API updates are generally the responsibility of the [...]
Sublime Text 2 Workflow & Packages
With the new year beginning all of us at Digital Surgeons are seeking ways to increase our personal efficiency and [...]
Is Facebook the only social networking giant in town? Yes, for now is the quick answer – at least among those bloggers responding to a Tweet from Digg founder, Kevin Rose on June 28 in which he seemed confident that Google was brewing up yet another social networking platform.
Interfacing with computers has always intrigued us. We’ve designed and developing an array of mouse based interfaces over the past decade in a vast range of industries. While mouse based interfaces have become the norm, we have also been inventing alternative navigations in attempts to hone our skills, impress our peers, and offer cutting edge solutions to industry leading clients.
Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Scvngr; the list of geolocation based social networks is growing faster than a bodybuilder on steroids.
The idea behind all of these networks is essentially the same: go someplace, do something (a check-in) and get rewarded with a badge, bonus, discount or freebie for doing it. The various levels to be achieved are a big part of the social gaming, in and of itself despite the offerings. Titles like “Mayor” and “Duke” give a clear sense of accomplishment vs. friends and other “competitors.” But there are clear rewards for the companies savvy enough to engage in the game – or, clearly, they wouldn’t be quite as keen to play along.
You only have one chance to capture someone’s attention on the web. And that one chance is a fleeting and extremely precious thing. Poor design – okay, an unattractive, inhospitable page, to be blunt – is virtually a guarantee that your prospective viewer will be viewing someone else’s page as fast as they can hit the back button.
Way back in the sixties, around the time when a handful of New York ad agencies were slowly emerging from the dark days of the hard sell, Leo Burnett worked to keep his Chicago shop on the straight and narrow. He believed that all effective marketing communication had three basic components, and expected his creative department to produce work that followed these guidelines.

