Curio 4.2.3

Curio 4.2.3 has just been posted to our site.

It fixes a few issues that have arisen since the release of Curio 4.2.2. With Mac OS X 10.5.2, Apple changed the information that they put on the clipboard when you drag and drop Mail messages, which broke Curio's ability to accept dropped messages. While Curio is still unable to accept dropped messages, with 4.2.3, you can once again copy and paste Mail messages into an idea space.

We also fixed an annoying bug that was introduced in 4.2.2, where expanded idea spaces in the Organizer would often collapse when adding, removing, or moving unrelated idea spaces.

Fun times: Italian cream sodas

Here's a fun posting because I'm in a happy mood:

A few weeks ago, I stopped by a neighborhood coffee shop and, on a whim, purchased an Italian cream soda flavored with banana and white chocolate as recommended by the barista.

One word: wow!

The next day, I found myself trying to recreate the experience at home with banana nectar, white chocolate syrup, club soda, ice, and half-and-half. It was awesome!

Then, before you could say that's amore, I found myself at Lollicup ordering 12, yes 12, bottles of various Monin syrup flavorings.

I'm in flavor heaven. :-)

Video and audio recording

Video and audio recording are among Curio 4.2's standout new features. For a long time, I have to admit, that I didn't understand the value of them for brainstorming, which is the primary focus of Curio. And yet, media recording was one of our most requested features. Now that it's in there, I'm a total convert.

Just the other day, I recorded a conversation that George and I had about a new feature that I'll be working on for Curio 5 (sorry, I can't tell you about it, yet). Since I knew Curio was recording our every word, it allowed me the freedom to really focus on our conversation and not worry about taking notes. Later that afternoon, I was able to go back through the recording and pick out the valuable nuggets and create an outline of our discussion.

I can really understand now how this feature can be useful in meetings and in the classroom, recording lectures. Once again, our customers have helped us make Curio even more invaluable. Thanks and keep those suggestions coming!

Curio and Kuler colors

Kuler, if you haven't heard, is an awesome community-based site for creating color schemes, hosted by Adobe.

Kuler has a programmer interface and I've had a to-do for months now to add Kuler to Curio.

Well, after reading this nifty post by John Nack I've discovered that Curio now has easy access to Kuler thanks to Lithograph's CocoaKuler.

CocoaKuler integrates into the Mac's system color picker, which is compatible with most Cocoa applications - including Curio - and some Carbon apps as well.


So, in Curio, after installing CocoaKuler, you double-click a color swatch in the Inspector or choose Format > Show Colors. Next, click on the CocoaKuler icon in the color picker.

You can easily find the most popular, the newest, or the highest rated color schemes. Resize the color picker window and you'll see a sweet CoverFlow-like interface for zooming through the available colors. Then you can click a color anywhere to select it.

Now you can easily create mind map colors where the various levels have complementary Kuler-inspired colors. Or find that perfect color combo by searching for "hot pink".

CocoaKuler is in beta right now but, if you work with colors, I encourage you to check it out!

Update: Looks like they've renamed it to Mondrianum and released a beta 2.

Curio and equations

Occasionally we receive a question regarding how to put mathematical equations into Curio. We have a large number of students, professors, and scientists using Curio so this is something that tends to come up fairly frequently.

While Curio doesn't include a built-in equation editor, I did stumble across a nifty method using a program that is included with Mac OS X.

If you look in /Applications/Utilities you'll find an application called Grapher. Launch it and you'll find a shockingly sophisticated 2D and 3D equation editor and graphing program.

To enter equations the first tip is to use the Equation Palette (via the Window menu) - I couldn't get the little drop down in the equation bar to work reliably for me. There's also a good amount of information available via the Help menu.

Once you have entered your equation you can select the equation itself and copy it to the clipboard where it is stored as a PDF image.

Paste that PDF image into Curio and you have a perfectly rendered equation which can be scaled to any size while maintaining full legibility.

You can also graph your equation in Grapher, of course, and then copy that as PDF and place that into your Curio idea space, as well.

Enjoy Grapher and if I find any more complete documentation for it (it used to be called Curvus Pro and was purchased by Apple), I'll certainly post more information.

Mind mapping tip for bloggers

Via The Mind Mapping Software Weblog I found an excellent article on using mind maps to take a blog posting and expand upon it.

You could follow the author's suggestions quite easily with Curio. First, create a new mind map and enter the topic of a recent blog entry you've posted as the central topic of your new mind map.

Then, in surrounding branches, brainstorm on ways that topic could be extended. You might try contrasting posts, follow-up posts, expand upon a comment from a user, etc.

In the article, the author even suggests expanding upon those generated ideas to see how "deep" a topic could be. However, you could also take advantage of some Curio features and drag in some external resources such as web clippings, images, Mail messages, interesting URLs, etc, that you will need as references for those potential postings, and make those the children of your idea topics.

And, with Curio, a single idea space can contain multiple mind maps. So, follow the author's advice and create several mind maps: one for each of the last five entries you've posted on your site.

As you flesh them out, you can zoom out and see at a glance how different topics are shaping up. Use Curio's flags or ratings to make certain items stand out so you know which topics to tackle first. Cool stuff!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. There's still a bit of time left on our MacSanta promotion, so if you haven't purchased or upgraded then time's running out!

Curio 4.2 is right around the corner and we're hard at work getting it ready for release. So stay tuned to this blog for more info!

MacSanta! Save up to 20% on Curio!

Happy Holidays!

Zengobi is excited to announce its participation in the annual MacSanta promotion.

Beginning December 9th, Curio will be available for a special discounted price. This includes new and upgrade licenses, and even discounts off our already low academic prices available through our Zengobi Academic Store.

On December 9th, if you use the coupon code below, all Curio licenses sold through the Zengobi store will be 20% off. Then, from December 10th through December 31st, Curio will be available at a 10% discount.

So, if you're running an older Curio, or if you've been contemplating a new purchase, now's the time to buy Curio!

To learn more about Curio 4, with its integrated mind mapping, Snippets, Community Center, and Leopard features click here.

And Curio 4.2's release - a free upgrade for Curio 4 customers - is right around the corner with more exciting features.... stay tuned!

On December 9th, save 20% by using the coupon code MACSANTA07 when you make your purchase. Of course, Santa's awfully busy this time of year so he might be a wee bit late in deactivating this code.

Then, from December 10th through Dececmber 31st, save 10% by using the coupon code MACSANTA07TEN when you make your purchase.

Happy holidays from everyone at Zengobi!
The Zengobi Team