We are happy to announce that our blog is moving to a new and better location.

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You can syndicate the new blog using RSS or Atom. If you’d like to have a better understanding on how content syndication works, the following video will demystify it all. We love it!

Looking forward to seeing you at the new blog location!

Just back from California and our big DEMO launch. The week started off with a nice send off article in the Montreal Gazette about our Montreal-based team and the 2 other Montreal-based companies who were attending (xtra-normal and Standout Jobs). We joined up in Palm Springs with our Berkeley based CEO, Joshua Rosen, who had the honor (and pressure) of presenting Cozimo to the world in a live 6 minute demo.

The challenge for us was getting across the idea of real-time media collaboration with only one demo screen (a limitation because the event was broadcast live). To accomplish this we enlisted the help of one of our customers – Millions of Us – who are using Cozimo to collaborate on the creation of the new web episodic What is Scion City. During the presentation we dropped in and joined the team in a real-time session to review the latest home page changes and video episode with people based in the US, Italy and France – a risky venture but in the end, it went off without a hitch.

While most of the public attention was focused on the live presentation, just as important to us was the chance to follow up with people in the more informal setting of the demo pavilion. Here we were able to show the product and talk in more detail about our product and plans with investors and journalists. It was also a good opportunity to meet some of the other companies who were there – a number of which we think could be good partners as we move forward.

All in all, we were very impressed with the professionalism and high production standards of the event. And judging from the amount of positive press we are receiving (and new customers signing up) it was a great way to launch.

We’re excited to announce that we will be officially launching Cozimo at DEMO 08 on January 28 in Palm Spring, CA. DEMO was started over 16 years ago by Chris Shipley, a leading technology author and journalist, as a way of showcasing promising new technology companies. It’s now regarded as one of the leading launch pads for new companies and attracts all the players, investment firms, and press. Chris personally interviews all the applicants and is extremely selective – only 70 companies of hundreds of applicants get accepted. So it’s very gratifying for us to be given the opportunity.

The format is pretty unique – presenters have all of six minutes to give a live demonstration of their product. No PowerPoints, canned demos or company presentations are allowed. It’s very professionally produced and makes for quite an impressive show. If you’ve never seen it, you can catch many presentations from prior years on their website (actually makes for an entertaining tutorial on the do’s and don’ts of live presenting). Aside from the presentations there’s another 3 days to show and talk about Cozimo at the DEMO pavilion, network, and basically build as much buzz as possible.

If you’re interested in attending, you can use the link in the banner above to get a discount on the registration fee. Otherwise, we’ll be sure to keep you posted daily here on the Cozimo blog. We have a lot of big plans for Cozimo in 2008 and this will be an exciting way to kick it off.

During his keynote address for Enterprise 2.0 last June, Andrew McAffee, a professor at Harvard made the interesting observation that “Email is virtually everyone’s current endowment of collaboration software.” Email, of course, was originally designed for sending and receiving messages and for that common task it’s an unprecedented success. Today, over 90% of Internet users use email. And with email so ubiquitous – especially in business – it’s easy to understand why we try wrangle it into doing tasks that it was not really designed to support – including review and collaboration. But as the Google Docs video above so nicely illustrates, when it comes to working on content together with a team, email alone can have a lot of drawbacks:

• Sending attachments makes it difficult to track versions over time and ensure that everyone is always working with the latest content.
• Email does not let you hold a conversation with more than one person at a time.
• Email does not provide a convenient record. Any markups made on visual content like images and video cannot be searched for from an email.
• Email is not generally integrated with project content.

Today project managers have a wide variety of communication tools to take advantage of in running a project (email, IM, VoIP) and all have their role to play in a collaborative workflow. The challenge arises in trying to coordinate and track communication as it relates to the content being developed. Google Docs represents a new apprach to the problem by integrating documents with various modes of communication from one easily-accessible web-based service. Cozimo takes the approach further for creative and design professionals by supporting rich media content like images, video and PDF files and letting you collaborate together with your team directly on the content itself when the needs arises. Old habits die hard, but as one of our customers so aptly put it “until you start using it (Cozimo) on a project it’s hard to appreciate just how much smarter the approach really is.”

The Crunchies are a new annual competition sponsored by GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, VentureBeat and TechCrunch to recognize and celebrate the most compelling and innovative startups of the year. There are lots of categories to choose from so we invite you to nominate Cozimo for all the ones you think describe us best (and there are so many . Nominations are open through midnight (pst) Wednesday so cast your vote here and pass the word. Thanks!

We had a great time last night at our first Startup Camp at No Regrets in Toronto. Startup Camps are events that bring together new and experienced technology entrepreneurs to present and discuss new ideas and ventures in an informal setting. Cozimo was invited to demo at the event and we had an evening full of thoughtful and useful discussions. One announcement we were excited to hear was the formation of a new chapter of Startup Camp in Montreal on January 23 (that’s our home turf for Cozimo North). So mark down the date and we’ll pass along more info as we get it.

Alexandre Renaud is the manager for professional and corporate services at National Animation and Design (NAD) Centre in Montreal, Canada. He’s now incorporated Cozimo as an integral tool to support the training programs he manages.

Hello Alexandre. Why don’t you start off by telling us about the NAD Centre?

The NAD centre is a major Canadian education centre offering high profile training for new media including 3D tools, compositing tools – everything that is related to digital imaging and video production. The centre has two major programs – one is our regular program with 80 full time students in 3D animation, visual effects & video games. The other – that is my department – offers professional and corporate services including intensive training, seminars and consulting services.

How are you using Cozimo?

Our business is to do training so our customers can learn to use tools for creating marketing presentations or design prototypes. In my department we do a lot of remote on-site training and we use Cozimo to provide support to our customers as they start out with their new projects. So Cozimo is really a teaching tool. It lets us review their work in progress and to make sure they are using the correct techniques. We’ve tried some other solutions but Cozimo is really the best because it lets us interact personally with the customers directly on the images and videos they are working on and everything is recorded right there for them to go back to refer to.

Do you have any good customer experiences to share?

We are using Cozimo now with a major corporate customer – Johnson & Johnson Design and Research Department – and the experience is going really well. I just finished a session with myself in one office, my trainer in another and the customer at theirs. We were all able to go through the video they were working on frame by frame, review it, make suggestions. Before Cozimo, we would never be able to offer this kind of support because they would have to come to our office and that would just take too much time. So, yes, they are very happy with this service. It’s very fast and easy to use.

Do you have any specific examples of how Cozimo has helped your business?

Actually, it’s enabling a new service and revenue stream for us – offering ongoing remote support and training. It’s going to be part of all our new contracts. Cozimo is great for this because we can interact directly with the customer and everything is recorded and tracked. Now our customers are getting service that is much more effective and valuable.

Have a lot of files to review? Now you can save time by uploading them all at once using the new multiple file upload tool. On the “File” tab of the collaboration folder click on the new “add multiple” link. Then simply select the files you want to upload from the file browser. You can use the Ctrl and Shift keys to select multiple files. The progress of the upload will be shown on the file page and when it’s completed a thumbnail image will be displayed.

Today is Blog Action Day where over 20,000 bloggers from around the world are banding together to focus attention on and raise funds for a single important cause. This year the focus is on the environment. In a timely coincident the Nobel Prize Committee helped the cause considerably last week by awarding the 2007 Peace Prize to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore for their work in creating “an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.” As they put it:

“By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.”

Unfortunately, in spite of all the attention being paid to environmental issues, most businesses have been slow to take up the cause. In the last year, for example, over 500 million business trips were made in the US – more than double the amount made just four years ago. And while over 70% of business people in one survey thought that online meetings would be more efficient than meeting in person only about 20% of businesses are currently using online collaborative technologies as an alternative. The good news, however, is that the message is starting take effect as more business leaders realize that doing what’s right for their business is often what’s right for the environment as well. Using online collaboration tools such as Cozimo to reduce business travel is not only smart business but also smart for the environment.

For our contribution in support of Action Day, Cozimo has pledged 20% of our subscription revenues through November to help the World Wildlife Fund in their efforts to protect endangered wildlife, preserve wild lands and address threats and challenges.

Green Grass Studios, a leading design communication firm based in Dallas, recently approached us about developing a customized client extranet for them. As Ryan Iltis of Green Grass explains it:

“Basically, Cozimo had everything we were looking for, but we really just wanted to provide a better experience for our clients by providing them with customized access through our website.”

Well, rather than develop a custom solution for Green Grass, we decided this would be a better opportunity to work with them to develop the features they were looking for as part of our standard services.

We’re now pleased to introduce the results of this collaboration with a number of new customization features. These include the ability to create an alternate branded login page (at a branded URL) and the ability to display a custom logo in place of the Cozimo logo when any collaboration folders created under that account are accessed. These features are now available as part of our standard services starting at the “Plus” level plan and higher.

Unless you’re a freelancer, the typical way to use this feature is to set up an account under the name of your company that can act as an “umbrella” account for all the project workgroups your company maintains (this is also, by the way, the most economical approach). The username of the account automatically becomes part of your custom URL. For example, Green Grass Studios created their account with the username “greengrass” and have created a custom client login page available through the “client login” link on their website homepage or at http://greengrass.cozimo.com. (Adding this logo is done by going to Account Settings > Update your personal profile.)

When using an umbrella account, one administrator can set up all the project workgroups that are required for the company and invite the relevant staff members to be part of the workgroups established. Each individual in the company should sign up for a free personal account with Cozimo in order to participate and personally identify themselves in the workgroups they are involved in. A great benefit to this approach is that your personal account can be used to participate in any Cozimo workgroup, whether it originates from your own company or from any other company you work with. With your one personal login and password you can access all your project content and messages from a single secure online location. That may not seem so important when you’re just starting out, but as your network and the number of workgroups you are involved with grow, you’ll find it becomes an invaluable time saver and organizational tool for you.