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.

An important goal we established when we first started Cozimo was to foster creative collaboration through many different forums. In developing the Cozimo system, we specifically designed it in an a modular fashion so that we could readily deploy and offer our real-time Image Collaboration Environment (what we call “ICE”) not just through our own applications, but also through the many different products, websites and services that could benefit from it.  Last year we worked with CGarchitect to enhance their showcase galleries with collaborative capabilities. Later in the year we introduce our WordPress plugin for integrating a collaborative image or video as part of a blog. And most recently we introduced our “Collaborate Now” tool and Firefox extension that allows people to instantly capture any web page and collaborate on it.

Over the past few months we’ve completed some significant upgrades to our backend collaboration server as well as enhancing our API so that we now have even greater functionality and flexibility to support these type of collaborative projects.  In the coming months you’ll be hearing more about a number of partnerships we’ve recently undertaken as well as new product options that will make this API available to individual companies wishing to enhance their existing CMS or intra/extranet.   If you have a specific project that you would like to pursue (commercial, educational or cultural), please feel free to contact us to discuss it. This is the type of collaboration we enjoy most!

When it was first introduced, the iPhone immediately intrigued us as a potential platform for collaborating on rich media. With its larger screen size, support for Safari (the “real web” as Apple puts it) and touch screen interface, it seemed like it would be the ideal convenience for creative people on the move. Now with faster Internet access of the new version, the device is even more compelling.

Unfortunately, our initial enthusiasm for the iPhone was somewhat dampened by the lack of Flash support which forms an important component of our collaborative interface (not quite the “real web”). Depending on who you listen to, this omission is simply a temporary limitation of the platform/software (the party line) or else it’s a strategic move on the part of Steve Jobs to thwart the wide adoption of the Flash format as mobile standard in favor of their own solutions.

In any event, we’ve always made the effort with Cozimo to be technology agnostic and so we continue undeterred with our efforts to develop a unique collaborative mobile solution. We only use Flash to collaborate and for multi-file upload so most of Cozimo worked out of the box. As a second step, it is now possible to review images together with their annotations and notes (which are displayed in a format better suited to the smaller screen size). This means that you can now review the feedback you receive while on the go and also respond using the built in messaging system. Moving forward we will next introduce functionality for uploading images from the iPhone (perfect for dealing with on-site problems) as well as provide basic annotation tools so you can collaborate in real-time with your team members.

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in a special Technology Day at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The theme of the day was the “Teaching and Learning in Four Dimensions” and focused on the impact that emerging 3D prototyping and immersive technologies are having on the world of fashion and education. The Keynote speakers were W. James Au and Janine Hawkins. James gave an engaging presentation about the principles of Second Life (SL) and how the various user groups interact. Janine is the Editor of Second Style in SL and spoke more specifically about the top designers in SL and how many talented international, especially Japanese, designers are using it to gain recognition and promote their work. I was really struck by just how quickly and profoundly the virtual and real worlds of fashion are converging in the design, commercial and educational realms. You can find an excellent summary of the day’s events on Elaine Polvinen’s Virtual Fashion Technology blog.

The event was organized (exceptionally well, I may add) by Beth Harris, a professor of art history at FIT and a leading proponent of technological innovation in education. Beth originally discovered Cozimo through the web and contacted us to learn more. Since then we’ve developed a close relationship and Beth has shared her considerable experience and passion on the needs of educators. Dealing effectively with rich media is one of her primary concerns and she immediately jumped at the opportunity to experiment with Cozimo’s new WordPress plugin on smARThistory, a blog she maintains with her colleague Steven Zucker.

Thanks to Beth’s invitation, I had the opportunity to meet educators from FIT and other institutions who attended Technology Day. We’ll be setting up full Cozimo accounts for a number of courses in the upcoming semester and we’re looking forward to supporting other educational initiatives they are working on.