Announcing March Release with DeepZoom integration and New Features. Timed for MIX09.

16th March 2009

storm ideas, a Microsoft BizSpark company are really excited to announce that we’ve gone live with the latest version of their flagship product colaab. This release has been timed to coincide with Microsoft's MIX09 conference in Las Vegas which we'll be attending attending to promote this release.

The most exciting news is that we've completed the integration of Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom into colaab! What this means for our users is that they can review and collaborate on extremely large images without having to wait for them to download and zoom in without losing quality!

“Storm Idea’s colaab solution demonstrates not only the creativity of Storm Ideas but the strength of the Microsoft platform,” said Bindi Karia, UK VC/Emerging Business Lead at Microsoft Ltd. “Through the Microsoft BizSpark program, Storm Ideas has been able to keep their costs down, while delivering truly innovative solutions to their customers by utilizing Microsoft technologies, especially Deep Zoom.”

To get an idea of how this works check out this quick video which shows me viewing a 9MB image, a 12MB image and a 160MB image without having to download them first. On each one I zoom in on comment locations in incredible resolution and detail. At the end of the video I upload a 4MB image which is then DeepZoomed behind the scenes and becomes available to me and anyone I choose to share it with without the need to download it and with no loss of quality from the original image.

This is the key difference that DeepZoom brings to the table and is something that really differentiates colaab. Giving users and their collaborators quick and detailed access to high resolutions images be they maps, medical imagery, architectural and construction plans or high resolution comps and photographs used in a design project.

It’s a superb was of exposing these images to others to review and collaborate. Commenting, annotations, live chat and more all still work in the same way. Using colaab in this way saves so much time and hassle while presenting your content to others at it’s best.

Current ways of doing this are broken:

• Email filters stop large attachments and collaboration get’s lost in a series of reply-all chains
• Services to transfer large files still mean the recipients have to download the file and have the correct program to view it in – and there are no collaborative functions
• Sending large files or drawings by courier is expensive, time consuming and limits collaboration, resources drift out of date and expensive mistakes are easy to make

We’ve initially set a limit of 50MB per upload while we gather feedback on this latest development, this will rise in the future.

New Features

We've also added the following features to colaab with this release:

• Comment statuses and the actions tab
• Sharing and download added to resource view
• Manage workspace from within workspace
• Scroll-wheel support for zooming
• Comment borders
• Around 150 small bug fixes and small improvements

For full details of these features please see our blog.

The key differentiators of colaab include:

Actually review and collaborate on documents, images and video online within the browser with no download

Other collaboration tools say they offer “Document / Resource Management” but in almost all cases you have to download the files in order to view them or the system in question only deals with a specific file type. With colaab you can view Documents (DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, PDF, XPS) directly within the browser with no additional installation.

Review and collaborate on extremely large images without having to wait for them to download and zoom in without losing quality

This is a key difference that Silverlight DeepZoom gives us and is something that no-one else on the market is offering. Users can upload a 50MB high resolution image (building plans, high resolution photography, medical images) then collaborate with others over it without them having to wait for the download and with no loss of quality. It is also a superb way of just exposing these images to others using the share functionality. Saves so much time and hassle.

Review and collaborate with others in Real Time

We’ve worked very hard to make as much of the interaction in colaab also work in real time when collaborating with others and is something that is not really offered by more standard HTML based products. Colaab features a level of rich experience that comes with being a genuine RIA, something that building out the front-end using Microsoft Silverlight has enabled.

Notes to Editors

Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is an innovative new program that unites Startups with entrepreneurial and technology resources in a global community with a common goal of supporting and accelerating the success of a new generation of high-potential Startups.

Growth of online collaboration

• Collaboration is the next phase of the internet, a phase that analysts see as a $34 billion market opportunity. Don Proctor Senior Vice President Cisco.
• The business social software market will grow from $920m in 2007 to $3.3 billion in 2011. The Radicati Group
• 70m young Americans born between 1980 and 1992 are entering the workforce with different priorities, social networking needs and relationships with technology

Silverlight

• Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plugin that enables features such as animation, vector graphics and audio-video playback that characterize rich Internet applications
• Since it was launched in 14th October 2008, the Silverlight 2 plugin has been downloaded 100 millions times. A version of Silverlight is installed on 1 in 4 web connected computers. Scott Guthrie Blog
• colaab is one of the first commercially available rich internet applications using the Silverlight 2 client.