Cozi Blog

Shopping Lists Update

We've updated Cozi's Shopping Lists area.

This round of changes includes:

1. Visual improvements
   The page looks a little bit nicer overall.
    
   
2. Usability improvements
   We've moved around buttons such as "New List" to make them easier to find. The new design is performing better in current usability studies, although we'll continue to test and improve this page.
    
   
3. Better support for having many lists
   Some of you have lots of lists! The old Shopping Lists page used to show multiple rows of list buttons at the top of the page, making the list itself small and generally throwing off the layout of the page. The new page always shows a single row of lists. A "More Lists" menu appears on the right if all the lists won't fit.
    
   
4. New Coupons module to help families save money
   Families are looking for tools to ride out the current economic downturn. We've partnered with coupon provider Coupons, Inc., to deliver money-saving coupons inside Cozi. Click the coupon module in the lower left to print out coupons for the products you're interested in. (Note: The coupons module does not yet work in Apple Safari.)
    
   
5. Advertisement has moved to the upper right
   We continue to optimize our screen layouts so that families can focus on getting things done. We have adjusted the page layout (with the ad now on the right) to be less cluttered than the old one, even with a larger ad. We recognize the design challenge in balancing the needs of families for utility and advertisers. Ads let us keep Cozi free for families and to deliver you relevant content. You've told us that's important! We strive to find advertisers whose products will be of interest to you. Our goal is to create a product that's more valuable to families with the ads than without. We believe we're measuring up to that task--Cozi's ads perform better than industry averages, suggesting we're on the right track. If you know of companies or products that other Cozi families would benefit from and that you would like to see advertised within Cozi please let us know.

Check out the new Shopping Lists area for yourself. We hope you like it!

Jan Miksovsky
Chief Product Officer

Latest improvements to Cozi

Last week we updated Cozi with a couple of new features:

You can now change the date and time of your Family Journal entries

Families that try our Family Journal are enthusiastic about how simple it is, but many told us we were missing a key feature: the ability to pick the date and time for a journal entry. In response to your feedback, we've address that limitation. Each post now shows the date when it was posted, and you can click the date to change it:

Most people just wanted to pick the date of a post, so we've made that the easiest thing to do. If you want to add a specific time to a post, click the little clock icon next to the date.

Cozi is helping to get school schedules online

Speaking of user requests, we have heard manyrequests for a way to automatically download school schedules in Cozi. We want this feature too! While the underlying technology to do this has existed for years, most schools haven't been aware of the need for this, or have been unsure of how to go about publishing their school calendar in an online form. It's hard for a company like Cozi to change the way schools do things, but we've been doing our part to make it easier for schools to publish their calendars online.

Cozi, in partnership with Gannett Company, Inc., and Intand, has helped make the schedules for over a thousand schools available online. These schedules include major yearly school events such as the first and last days of school, school breaks and holidays, early dismissals, and parent-teacher conferences. We've also helped Intand create a free service for schools, called Tandem for Schools, that lets them quickly enter the key schools dates and publish them online to Cozi and other popular calendar products.

If your school's schedule is available in Cozi, you can add the schedule to your family calendar. If your school then publishes any changes to that schedule, those changes will automatically appear in Cozi. Appointments from your school include the name of the school at the bottom:

In this beta release, school events only appear in the web-based calendar. School events do not yet show up in printed views or in Outlook calendars you sync with Cozi.

To find whether your school's calendar is available within Cozi, go to the main Settings pageof Cozi's web version and click the School Calendars link. If your school isn't there yet, you'll find a link to help your school bring its calendar online.

— Jan Miksovsky, Chief Product Officer

Some responses to questions about the Cozi 2.0 release

It’s been about a week since we released Cozi 2.0, and we’ve heard some great feedback from users about the new release. Some families had questions about the release, and I wanted to answer some of them here.

• There are still several features in the PC-based Cozi 1.0 product that aren’t yet in the web-based Cozi 2.0 product. One area is Shopping Lists, especially the history of purchases that lets you quickly reenter items you buy frequently. We’re working at bringing that history feature and the rest of Shopping Lists over to the Cozi 2.0 product. We believe that, when we’re done, it will be every bit as good as the Cozi 1.0 Shopping Lists area, and better in some important ways.
  
  Another area that’s clearly important to some users is offline use. That feature will be trickier to deliver on the web but, thanks to ongoing web technology improvements, there are now several ways by which we could offer offline use even in a web-based application. We’re currently evaluating those options. In the meantime, people who need offline support can continue to use Cozi 1.0.

• We’re not taking away the existing PC-based Cozi 1.0 product anytime soon. If you depend upon the features mentioned above that are only in Cozi 1.0, you can and should continue using that version. We will continue to offer and support Cozi 1.0 until it’s clear that Cozi 2.0 meets families’ needs better than Cozi 1.0 across the board.
   
• Cozi still loves PCs and all they can do. There are still some things only PC applications can do, and in those areas we will continue to offer downloadable features. For example, it’s not currently possible to use a plain web site as a screen saver, so we will continue to offer our Cozi Collage photo screen saver as a PC download. The same thing goes for our Cozi Outlook Toolbar download.
  
  That said, web technologies have advanced to the point where we can begin to deliver, for example, a web-based family calendar that’s better in many respects than the earlier PC-based one. We don’t want to lose any of the features of the PC-based Cozi 1.0 product, we just want to deliver them on the web when we can. That makes them available to the largest number of families (including those that use Macs) with the least amount of download hassle.
  
  
• You can still have a desktop shortcut to Cozi. When you download Cozi Collage, you'll get a desktop shortcut that will open Cozi 2.0 in a streamlined window called Cozi Express. This lets you keep Cozi handy throughout the day, just like with Cozi 1.0.
   
• To get the best Cozi 2.0 experience, use IE 7.0 or Firefox. Some people using Internet Explorer 6.0 have said the web-based Cozi 2.0 release looks significantly worse than Cozi 1.0. In many cases, the issues are a result of the limitations of IE 6.0. If you’re using IE 6.0, we strongly encourage you to get the latest version of IE—if not for a better Cozi experience, then at least for the long list of important security improvements that were made in IE 7.0.

We understand that any transition entails change for our users. We’re making this transition from Cozi 1.0 to Cozi 2.0 at a careful pace. We will keep checking in with families in a variety of ways to make sure we’re doing things right. If you’re ready to jump to the web version now, you can do so now, but if you feel the Cozi 1.0 product still meets your needs best, then by all means please continue using it.

Jan Miksovsky,
Chief Product Officer

Cozi 2.0 Is Here!

If you haven’t tried Cozi 2.0 yet, you’re in for a treat! I had high hopes and expectations for the new version of Cozi based on the highlights mentioned in the sneak preview last week, and I haven’t been disappointed. In fact, I am thrilled with the new features of Cozi 2.0.

For example, the new monthly print feature looks great, and will completely change the way I use my family calendar. I’ve always loved being able to add color-coded details to each day, but sometimes felt a little frustrated at not being able to print or view a really good monthly overview of my calendar.

Another feature that I really like in Cozi 2.0 is the recipe search. With Cozi’s great shopping list feature, it only makes sense to be able to access recipe information from the Internet, and add ingredients directly to a Cozi grocery list. Cozi 2.0 allows me to do exactly that through the Betty Crocker website. My first search was for a seafood recipe that might please all my picky eaters, and I was immediately rewarded with a great kabob recipe that my kids loved. I loved the fact that I was able to search for the recipe directly from Cozi, add the ingredients to my shopping list, and send my husband a message asking him to check the list from the store on his way home. Now that’s one-stop shopping and meal planning!

And perhaps my favorite feature of Cozi 2.0 is the Cozi Family Journal. I just can’t get enough of this incredible way to keep track of the fun events and family moments that I might otherwise forget. The beauty of the family journal is how quick and easy it is to document the funny interactions of my kids, or the mini milestones that come and go each day. I’ve meant to keep a good journal for years, but never have. It's not easy to find a good system for keeping a contemporaneous record of all the great things that happen each day. The Cozi Family Journal is exactly the system I’ve been looking for, because it allows me to jot down a quick sentence or two while I’m in the midst of a great family moment, rather than trying to recreate it later. I can then jump back into the fun moment, and add a picture or more details later when I have more time. It’s amazing!

You can undoubtedly tell that I am a big fan of Cozi 2.0, and I’m thrilled to be able to pass along the good news. If you haven’t tried the web version of Cozi yet, it’s definitely worth a look. To check it out, just sign in to your Cozi account from www.cozi.com. There's an area in the lower right hand corner that says, "Already a User?"

Not only is Cozi 2.0 simple and fantastic, but moving to the web will put me on the fast track to getting any new features that Cozi creates down the road. Given what they’ve already put together in Cozi 2.0, I can’t wait to see what Cozi comes up with next!