The past two years have been quite a ride, and it’s far from over. With our birthday also comes a new evolution of ZeroMethod. We are officially doing away with client services so that we can focus more on our own internal projects. In conjunction with this re-focusing, we are also scrapping our entire 5-year company roadmap and re-creating it to match our new goals and mission.

These changes will soon be reflected on the website under our About page, and under our Portfolio of projects. Keep an eye out for them!

In the meantime, I hope you will all join me in wishing ZeroMethod a very…

Happy 2nd Birthday!

Here’s to many more.

Fortunately, we DO have indomitable spirits.

Blocket Science Progress

We have run into a bit of a snag in our progress. ZeroMethod is not an Apple workshop, and so we have only one MacBook Pro. It currently is the only thing capable of running XCode / PhoneGap, and now that no longer is true.

Our snag basically breaks down into this: We have development issues related to an older version of PhoneGap and can’t proceed with Blocket Science until we get the latest version of PhoneGap; the latest version of PhoneGap requires the latest version of XCode; the latest XCode requires an upgrade of our MacBook Pro’s OSX version to Lion.

It’s a headache, but figuring out how to better handle issues like this is exactly what we’re good at doing. We are now considering making Blocket Science a Rhodes application as an affordable response to our 1-Apple-only issue. If we stick with PhoneGap, we have the benefits of a stronger open-source community. If we go with Rho, we will have the ability to develop on multiple workstations instead of just the Apple.

Decisions… Decisions… We will make them once we interview RhoStudio a bit more.

Chaos Reactor Progress

If there was ever a project that had growing pains, it would be this one.

The sheer amount of conceptual versions for this project alone is headache-inducing. However, we are determined to make it a project that really makes an impression, and so we are generating and scrapping ideas left and right in our effort to grow this project into something big.

The toughest question surrounding this project is what Chaos Reactor would actually be about. It has morphed from a personal blog into an amalgam of activist and entertainment media. By continuing to focus on the concoction of activist/entertainment media, we believe the project is slowly setting all of its wheels on the right track. The next big step for the Chaos Reactor is to really expand upon the treatment of the content shared via the website (i.e. make it more entertaining & attention-garnering), to expand the level of user interaction with the website & its content, and also to expand on the cover story for the entire project and its characters.

With a little luck and a lot of hard work, the expansions to Chaos Reactor should really attract some attention!

This one is here to stay for a while.

Our new site is running a heavily-modified version of Kriesi’s Propulsion theme, a high-calibur business website framework. For the cost and the powerful functionality right out of the box, we simply couldn’t resist. Thanks Kriesi for your hard work and dedication!

From the ground up with all functionality included, we estimated this website would have cost us about 4-6 months. Thanks to Propulsion, it only took us a total of two months from purchase, through development modifications, through content preparation, through live transfer tests, and then finally through live deployment.

We hope you enjoy using this site as much as we’ve thoroughly enjoyed building it!

This — as many of us know — is the long held motto of the technological colossus, Apple.

The passing of Steve Jobs has had a profound effect on all of us, and it is truly remarkable how sweeping of a response there has been to such a sad event. Looking through the social media and news feeds, it has been jam-packed with praise and commemoration. I would love to see the trending statistics of Twitter and Facebook, because I bet it would be awe-inspiring to see the sheer amount of discussion about the differences he has made in all of our lives.

To me, this is what the Steve Jobs difference means. He tried to make the world a better place by helping people unite with technology. His vision changed the world, quite literally. He has been compared to being the Henry Ford and Thomas Edison of our time, and I believe rightfully so. He took the world and made it his own, changing the way we all think, learn, grow and interact.

I remember the first computer I ever wanted was an Apple IIgs, even though I ended up with a Compaq PC.  We had them in my middle school, and I would always spend extra time messing around with them. Trying to figure out Apple BASIC as a kid was rather interesting, and it was one of the reasons that I eventually was lead into learning C/C++ and then on to web development.

My first multi-player gaming experience was playing Marathon on a PowerPC in 1994 when it first came out, which quickly lead into finding Doom, one of my most beloved game series of all time.

Going forward…

If there is one thing that I have taken from this event, it is a feeling of hope.

Out of such tragedy always comes hope. Perhaps it is because we have no choice but to move on. Perhaps it is the undying and enduring human spirit. Perhaps it is all the good left behind by that person still resonating through us all. Or perhaps it’s all of that, and more.

We can not let our lives stand idly by and do nothing. We all should learn from the Steve Jobs difference, and use this gift he has so selflessly given all of us for our own great visions. We must do what it takes to make this world a better place. I believe this is what Steve Jobs really wanted for all people.

Don’t be trapped by dogma–which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

I, for one, will take heed to what this means to me. ZeroMethod is but an infant, and there are still many things to figure out, but this company from hereon will be focusing on trying to make this world a better and different place by helping people through the power and influence of technology. We do not expect to be as great as Steve Jobs or Apple, but we can always strive to one day be a company that makes a big difference.

With the advent of HTML5 and CSS3, the Internet has truly blossomed into an environment that fosters now more than ever the ability for artistic expression, challenging all web designers alike to step up their game and become more than just a Photoshop jockey. Thanks to the hard work of many people including those at W3C, we designers now possess the tools and support we always needed to effectively make the web a beautiful place.

Busting Up Tradition

Every day, an increasing amount of websites and rich Internet applications are being released into the wild. Some of these productions are designed far outside the boundaries of what the web has traditionally been, and my prediction is that this behavior will only increase exponentially as designers explore the possibilities of current web technologies and continue to receive more support to build their own expressive works. If there is a good time to start breaking yourself of any traditional web design technique you’ve rutted into, it’s right now.

Design is the foundation of all the arts.

~Paul Rand

The man considered to be the father of modern graphics design, Paul Rand, knew that at the heart of all artwork is design. So then, what is artwork? Is it drawing? Painting? Illustration? Vector graphics? Web interfaces? 3D models? &emdash; The answer is all of the above, and more. Everything creative you ever do has a design behind it, no matter how simple or complex. With this in mind, would it not be appropriate to say that the uniqueness of your artwork operates off the principle of breaking apart traditional design and reforming it into an evolved state?

How Does It Taste?

Design is a lot like making a meal, actually. You could follow the instructions and do what others are doing to make something that tastes like the standard. Or, you can start exploring different herbs, spices and other ingredients, taste-testing it along the way so you get it perfect to your liking, thereby designing your meal to be your very own unique concoction that others will surely enjoy more than the recipe on the box!

In the same way, when you design a graphical or illustrative piece, you could look at what others have done and create designs using those same techniques to make something that is considered up to standards, or you can combine standard techniques with some sheer creative exploration, feeling things out as you go along and pushing beyond what others have done, exploring for better ways to express and interact.

Importance Of Diversity

An entire article could be written about the importance of good design, and has been on many occasions (Google found about 38.5 million results), so there is little need to defend it. However, good design diversity is something that I believe needs more attention. I can go to any one of a bundle of theme websites and get a good design, but it will just be a design that potentially many others already have in use. It doesn’t reflect my unique creativity that has been built up from my own personal experimentation and exploration. It’s not that the designers didn’t do a good job. Quite the contrary! Those designers worked hard created their designs to their own personal tastes. However, it isn’t a design with my personality. Remember, a unique design always makes more of an impression than one that’s been used on other websites. If you’d prefer a design that exhibits your own personality, let us help you out!

While there’s no denying that mobile devices are gaining power and popularity, the argument that the PC is going extinct seems too near-sighted. Smaller and more efficient devices have stormed the market, allowing consumers to migrate certain activities from their PCs to mobile devices. There’s no doubt that this is an excellent development, but the immense amount of marketing hype has influenced some consumers into thinking that mobile is the be-all, end-all of computing. The desktop PC is still going strong, and is here to evolve.

Price, Power, Portability

Our technological landscape is beautifully diverse. The current computing gamut could be summarized as follows: desktops, laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices. No single device category has what it takes to completely convert users of other technologies. As with everything in life, compromises must be made; it’s an issue of give-and-take. Desktop computers offer a huge range of flexibility, modification options and value at the cost of sacrificing portability. Price and power, relative to desktop machines, are directly proportional to each other: pay more, get more.

The largest real threat to the desktop tower is not mobile devices at all, but the laptop. Newer laptop computers offer power on-par with desktop machines, although they can be significantly more expensive. Heating issues become more prominent as more powerful components are thrown into the mix, which affects the mobility of the device. Smaller devices such as netbooks are great for more simple tasks, but lack the hardware to handle things like graphics editing or heavy gaming. This effectively relegates the role of the netbook to handling tasks such as communications, spreadsheets, and Internet browsing.

The Gaming & Mod Community

Hardcore gamers need ample power to play increasingly demanding and realistic games. Game designers and multimedia producers also require large amounts of power and storage to accomplish their goals. Extra screen real estate is another perk that desktop users enjoy.

Members of the mod community love to tinker with and customize their beloved rigs. The market that exists for PC mods clearly shows a healthy interest in the desktop PC. Laptops and mobile devices can only be customized internally, with cases or sleeves for protective purposes. Additionally, warranties on desktop PCs generally won’t be voided by making cosmetic or functional modifications to the housing.

People Like New Stuff

Whenever a new product with promise of revolution is released, lots of people are going to check it out. It’s just human nature to be curious. However, a mobile “conversion” should not be implied. It’s expected that consumers will be interested in hyped and heavily-promoted products. Short-sighted fanatics and reviews present skewed statistics showing a mass exodus from the desktop environment, but this simply isn’t the case.

So, What Now?

There’s no denying that technology is evolving exponentially. However, rather than extinction, the role of the desktop PC is being redistributed. Portable devices capable of replacing the desktop PC will eventually exist, however there will always be a need for the desktop due to its sheer competition on price and power.