Recently we introduced a few new features into Cozimo to make it easier to integrate a collaboration folder into other project management or groupware applications such as Basecamp and Clarizen. While most project management applications have functionality for attaching and distributing files to project messages, milestones or tasks, few of them offer their team members the capabilities for viewing the files online, let alone annotating them. So project team members typically have to fall back to downloading and marking up the files and then uploading the markups for another cycle of review and distribution. By linking to a Cozimo collaboration folder instead of attaching files, you can significantly streamline the review process for visual media files. Team members have the convenience of reviewing files online and seeing and responding immediately to comments and notes made by other team members. You also have the option to review files together in live review sessions and unlike web conferencing all the annotations are persistent and can be reviewed at any time as the project progresses.

Using Cozimo in conjunction with a project management application is a straightforward process:

1. Create a Cozimo workgroup that includes the people who have access to the project.
2. When you have a set of files that you want reviewed, create a collaboration folder and upload the files (reorder them if desired).
3. Click on the “Collaborate” tab of the folder to access the first file and then click on “Link” to display the URL



4. Copy it and then paste it into the message, task or milestone of your project management application.

When the specified team members receive notification of the new message, they click on the Cozimo link and the Cozimo workspace will open in a new window. They can use the thumbnails to navigate through the files that have been uploaded and leave their comments and markups.

Reviews can also be conducted in real-time by clicking on “Start presentation”. Team members can return at any time to review all the annotations that have been made by themselves and others.

We’re pleased to announce a new partnership with Clarizen – a robust, easy-to-use online project management platform that provides a complete suite of integrated tools for ensuring that your projects run efficiently and are aligned to meet your business objectives. Unlike most project management systems that tend to focus on the management aspects of a project, Clarizen offers a more “user-centric” workflow that benefits the individual team member and facilitates team collaboration – an approach that makes it particularly appealing for creative media projects involving many internal and external stakeholders.

Cozimo offers a natural extension to Clarizen’s centralized approach to content management by allowing users to review and provide feedback and collaborate directly on any rich media content that may be posted. This combination provides a complete and cost-effective solution for organizations looking for a more advanced and integrated approach to project management and digital content collaboration. Try the solution out for yourself by signing up for a free 30-day trial of Clarizen.

Last week, the winners of the annual CGarchitect Architectural 3D Awards were announced at the Mundos Digitales Conference in La Coruna Spain. In recent years, the field of digital architecture has grown into a significant specialty of the digital media world – a fact recognized by the inclusion in this year’s conference of a dedicated digital architecture track alongside the more traditional fields of Animation, Vfx and Games. A review of the winning entries and nominations shows just how far this field has advanced with the quality of productions often surpassing both the technical and creative standards of many Hollywood films. Our congratulations to all of this years winners and nominees.

Now in its sixth year, the CGarchitect 3D awards have become widely recognized as the “Academy Awards” of the field. Organized by Jeff Mottle, founder of CGarchitect.com, the event now attracts over 1200 entries from dozens of countries around the globe to compete in ten categories. A panel of twelve industry leaders reviewed all the entries to first nominate the finalists in each category and then to select the winners. With the judges themselves spread over three continents, Cozimo helped out by providing a platform to facilitate the distribution of the entries and the sharing of feedback during the judging process. “What’s become apparent”, Jeff observed “is just how international this field has become over the years. With tools like Cozimo, talented artists and producers from countries all over the globe can collaborate effectively with partners or clients anywhere in the world. It’s really changing the dynamics of the industry.”

We’re pleased to announce a new partnership with Chalex Corp. of Grasonville, MD. We first met the CEO of Chalex, Murray Oles back during our launch at DEMO 08 where he and his partner, Gary Bollinger, were also unveiling their latest product – a web-based marketing resource management system call BizFlo.  The latest release of BizFlo now offers a new annotation module that was built using Cozimo’s real-time Image Collaboration Environment (ICE).

BizFlo is really quite a unique product. It’s one of the few web-based solutions on the market to combine a fully featured asset management system with multi-level workflow management tools based on the XPDL standard (developed by the Workflow Management Coalition). A major client, IDL Worldwide (a division of Mathews International) uses it to manage the routing and scheduling of hundreds of concurrent point-of-sale projects for companies such as GNC, BP and Chevron.  Now with Cozimo’s ICE integrated with the platform, the company can also solicit and track more accurate feedback directly on the content and conduct live synchronized review sessions.

I asked Murray to comment on the response they’ve been receiving so far from their customers:

The integration of Cozimo with BizFlo was a natural fit.  Customer’s training was handled in 3 seconds.  “Hold the shift key and click on the thumbnail to launch and interact with Cozimo”.  With Cozimo and the BizFlo activity log with version control a complete history of the graphic lifecycle of every job is at the customer’s finger tips.This has certainly improved productivity for the review and approval process so naturally, they’ve been very pleased with this additional functionality.

We’re pleased to announce our partnership with Flypaper Studio. We met Flypaper last year when we both launched at Demo 08 and immediately saw the synergies that existed with our offerings. Flypaper produces an intuitive and robust desktop application for producing Flash content. Essentially it removes the complexity of the Flash platform and makes it accessible to non-technical content developers in an application that is as familiar as PowerPoint. This means that organizations can now affordably produce compelling interactive Flash presentations for marketing and training programs in-house. Their latest release of Flypaper introduces the “Flypaper Platform” enterprise solution that provides an integrated content management system for storing, distributing and tracking the progress of a project throughout its development.

Cozimo’s collaboration tools have been integrated into this system so that anyone involved with the project development (both within and external to the organization) can also review and annotate the content either independently or together in real-time. In recognizing the importance and value of a collaborative workflow, Flypaper has really set themselves apart and come up with a unique solution for flash content developers. It’s been great working with the Flypaper team on this project and we’re already looking ahead to future collaborations. To read the complete press release announcing the partnership, click here.