NYT: "Zengobi Curio Does Everything"

A review of Curio made it to the main technology page of the New York Times website. It's a newsfeed inclusion from an article on TheAppleBlog by Nick Santilli.

Needless to say, I was thrilled, honored, and rendered speechless when my eyes passed over the words "Zengobi Curio" while scanning the NYTimes this morning. A nice way to wake up that's for sure. :-)

Yippee for Curio!

Curio around the world

A French video review and now a review in the Czech language by Lukáš Gregor.

Curio is certainly making its way around the world!

Video overview of Curio

JenM4e has just posted a fantastic 30-minute video overview of Curio 5 for Débuter sur Mac. Note that it's all in French so this is a great chance to practice your French language skills.

She hits on all the major features in Curio and even most of the minor ones.

Thanks, JenM4e!

The walk

Yesterday, thanks to very cool final release of Safari 4, I had to do what I call "the update walk". Let me explain.

I generally first hear about a new software update from Apple via one of the RSS feeds I follow. And, because I'm eager to grab the latest and greatest, I launch Software Update on my main Mac to grab the update.

While that's scanning my system to determine what updates I need, I walk to my secondary Mac and launch Software Update. And then I immediately walk over the laptop and do the same there.

Then I go back to the first, click Install Updates and type my admin password. It starts to download and install the updates.

While that's working, I do the same at the second Mac and then the laptop.

By the time I'm done with the laptop, I'm back to the first Mac where I almost always have to click "Restart" to restart the Mac. Ditto the two other machines.

Then I log into the main machine. While it logs in and starts up my plethora of apps, I log into the other two machines.

And, yes, then I'm finally done and I can sit down at my main Mac and continue working on Curio, with a warm contented feeling that all my Macs have the latest and greatest from Apple.

Oh sure, I could just wait until all the Macs have downloaded the updates all on their own in the background sometime during the next 24 hours or so. But then my Macs are out of sync and I have a "Install" and then a "Restart" button staring at my face when I run to grab the laptop or go use the second machine.

Ahem...

All whining aside, I'm of course thrilled with all of the updates! And, in general, the walk is not a problem whatsoever.

It's just when I do this walk for a new iTunes, then QuickTime, then Airport Utility, then Digital Camera RAW converters, then iPhoto, then iLife, and then Safari — all since June 1st — I get a bit exhausted trying to stay hip and up-to-date. :-)

Wacom driver update

Some of our customers have had some jagged drawing experiences with Curio's pens and brushes and Wacom's Bamboo and Graphire tablets. I just found out that Wacom recently released a Driver 5.1.1-1 for OS X 10.4 & 10.5 that incorporates some fixes which already existed in their Intuos professional tablet drivers.

With the Bamboo tablet I just received this past weekend, scribbling seems to be nice and smooth — at least as smooth as the Intuos 2 I've had — so you may want to check it out.

Cinco de Mayo Sale!

¡Hola!

In celebration of Cinco de Mayo we're throwing a 25% off sale this week only! Just enter CINCO for the coupon code at the Zengobi store or our academic store when purchasing new or upgrade Curio licenses.

This is a limited time offer so act now!

Sighting: Best Mind Mapper

I just received an email regarding a recent LifeHacker post where they are discussing the best mind mapping application. I was happy to see that Curio is mentioned a view times in the comments.

If you want to give a shout-out for our little app then we'd certainly appreciate it! To vote for Curio your comment entry on LifeHacker must be "VOTE: Zengobi Curio".

Admittedly some of Curio's mind mapping functionality pales in comparison to some of the über feature-rich mind mappers out there. However, I think one concept that makes Curio unique is the ability to have multiple mind maps, plus outlines, plus notes and image collages, all on the same idea space. It's that freeform whiteboard environment that makes Curio pretty amazing, IMHO. And, of course, we do have some new cool mind mapping features planned for upcoming releases. :-)

Email bag: Address Book photos

The question from a customer:

When I drag an Address Book contact into a Curio idea space, why do I see a generic index card icon instead of the contact's associated photo?

My response:

In Address Book, choose the Address Book > Preferences menu item. Then click the vCard icon. Then check "Export photos in vCards".

Email bag: project setup

A customer recently wrote asking about how to use Curio to manage a large project which would normally be driven by a single, long multi-page outline. He was wondering about how to lay out this outline, how it would render, how to share this kind of project, and if he should change his normal approach to project management to take advantage of Curio's features.

Here's my response:

Curio is more like a graphical layout application than an outlining application or word processor, so you're in charge of pagination and things like that. Curio simply renders the list/mindmap/image/text where you put it.

I would wholeheartedly think about creating multiple outlines instead of one big outline. I think that's one concept that is a bit difficult to grasp for new Curio users, but very liberating when put into practice. Remember you can have an unlimited number of idea spaces, each containing one or more outlines, all within the same project.

In OmniOutliner, you (and I for that matter) have single outlines that are huge. In MS Word, I have single documents that are huge. But with Curio you can segment your thoughts so you can focus on them individually, while still keeping them together in a single project.

With Curio, pretend you have a room with dozens or even hundreds of whiteboards (aka idea spaces). On that whiteboard, you'll create an outline, a mind map, some scribbles, some images, etc. Each whiteboard allows you to really concentrate on a specific issue in your project.

In the same way, you can use Curio's idea spaces to address and focus your attention on specific issues. Then maybe even take advantage of Curio's "jump actions" so you can easily click your way to a remote "whiteboard" where you've researched something else.

So you don't have one huge outline or mind map, you have dozens of smaller collections, connected together like a big neural net. :-)

(Personally I find myself getting lost within my larger OmniOutliner outlines. That's why their "hoist" feature is so useful -- so you can concentrate on a specific part of your outline without getting lost in the hugeness of your outline. So, think of Curio's idea spaces as an automatic way to help you concentrate on specific issues.)

With all of your idea spaces of reasonable size, when you go to share your project with others either via PDF or HTML export, then each idea space should scale nicely to a single page allowing them to easily see what's going on.

I thought this conversation with a customer might be useful to others out there. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or comments.

Minor update

We released a minor update today (5.4.2) which squashes all the bugs reported to us over the past few weeks.

In addition, it adds a handful of little features:

• Press Shift-Spacebar at any hierarchical level in a list or mind map and all figures at that level throughout the collection will toggle their expand/collapse state.
• You can now convert between a list or mind map via the right-click context menu.
• Improved options in the context menu when right-clicking multiple selected asset figures.
• The Library now shows the asset filenames with their extensions so you can more easily tell the difference between several identically named files.
• If you hover the mouse over an idea space in the Organizer, you are now told if it's marked as private or not and, if not, its idea space number which makes printing a selected range of idea spaces much easier.

Tutorini: Task Lists

I'm on a roll.... I've just posted another new tutorini which shows off a hierarchical list of tasks with assigned start & due dates, completion percentages, and resources. It shows how dates can automatically bubble up from child figures to parents and how the Status shelf can be used to keep you on schedule.

It's about 9 minutes long but it's a pretty good overview of what you can with tasks in Curio.

Enjoy!

Tutorini: Mind Mapping

I just put up a new video tutorini on the main Curio page which explains how to do mind mapping, how figure and level styles work, and includes a bit of Sleuth searching. All wrapped up in a nice 4:28 video. Enjoy!

We also recently released a quick 5.4.1 update with some fixes and a handful of little features, including Quick Look support in the Spotlight and Scrapbook shelf modules simply by pressing spacebar. Very handy!

And, since Evernote recently announced that Evernote Premium members could store any type of document within a note, Curio's new Evernote shelf in 5.4.1 now supports any type of format as well. We even auto-unzip package files, such as Keynote or Curio documents, which were automatically zipped when they were uploaded to Evernote. Plus, we added much better support for notes that contain a mix of text and one or more file attachments.

Have fun!

Curio 5.4, Evernote, and Macworld special!

We just released Curio 5.4 with an extra spiffy feature: integrated Evernote support!

With the new Evernote shelf built into Curio 5.4 you can now easily search for notes stored on Evernote's service in your account. Searching can include text, tag, kind, and modification date. Then drag-and-drop the results directly to your idea space.

Any found images dragged into an idea space will retain their "optical character recognition" data so searching within Curio using the Search shelf will also find those same images.

And Curio will automatically map your Evernote notebooks and tags with Curio global tag set tags. That way any Evernote items dragged into Curio will be automatically associated with their corresponding Curio tags.

The combination of Curio's Evernote shelf and Evernote's free iPhone app and service means that on-the-go brainstorming and idea collection is now easier than ever.

In addition, Curio 5.4 includes several iCal sync improvements to make syncing more reliable. Plus tweaks to Sleuth, mind map drawing performance, and tons of other little fixes and tweaks. Read the complete release notes for all the details.

To celebrate the Curio 5.4 release during this week's MacWorld Expo, Zengobi is offering a 20% discount for any Curio purchases made this week from our online store. Just use the coupon code MACWORLD2009 when making your purchase.

Curio is TUAW's Friday Favorite

Brett Terpstra's wonderful review of Curio at TUAW:

It was at that point that I realized that Curio was the project management, note-taking and brainstorming solution I'd been looking for, or at least as close as I've found so far.

Quick update

Today, we released a quick 5.3.1 update that addresses a handful of bugs which popped up in the recent Curio 5.3 release. Be sure to check it out.

It also includes a little feature that many have requested: you can now move list and mind map items up and down in sibling order using the keyboard. We're mimicking MS Word's and OmniOutliner's shortcuts so you can use either Control-Shift-Up/Down Arrow or Command-Control-Up/Down Arrow and any selected items will travel up and down among their siblings.

Curio 5.3

Busy little bees.... that's what we are. Welcome to Curio 5.3 with lots of yummy goodies!

First, some incredibly important keyboard shortcut changes that you will hopefully love:

1. Tapping the spacebar will now expand/collapse a list or mind map hierarchical level, just like every other mind mapping app out there. It's a delight to use.
2. If the current item isn't a parent node in a list or mind map, you can now just tap the spacebar to activate the Quick Look preview, just like the Finder. If you are on a parent node, then the good 'ol Option-Spacebar tap will do the trick.
3. And, yes, if you press and hold the spacebar then the little Photoshop/iPhoto-like hand cursor still appears so you can easily scroll around the idea space.
4. The tab key will now create a child item in a mind map, once again just like every other mind mapping app out there. I can hear the cries of happiness from all our mind map users. :-)

Okay. So what about the cool new features? Let's go:

1. Lots of people loved the print headers and footers we introduced in 5.1 but they wanted to customize them. You got it. Via Curio's Preferences you can now use coolio variables to insert the project name, idea space title, idea space number and any custom text you want in there.
2. AquaMinds NoteTaker NTML importer so you can quickly import existing notebooks created in that product.
3. Convert lists to mind maps and vice versa via the Arrange menu. Very handy.
4. Export lists or mind maps as text outline or RTF outlines so you can transfer your work into other applications, such as Word or MindMeister.
5. Paste a text outline as a mind map allows you to easily transfer a mind map from MindMeister (via its Copy as Text command), or OmniOutliner or FreeMind (via their Copy command).
6. When activating the screen snapshot feature in Curio we'll now automatically hide Curio's own windows so you can take the shot without us being in the way.
7. Spread PDF is now even smarter since it will start the spread based on the page number displayed in the first PDF figure it finds on the template idea space. So, set it to page number 25 and the spread will start with that page through the number of pages in the PDF.

There are a ton of other little features and fixes, including a much more useful right-click figure popup menu, so be sure to check out the full scoop in the release notes.

As an aside, we're now using Amazon's brand spanking new CloudFront to deliver our dmg disk images as well as our website's huge png images and movies. This should result in much faster downloads for everyone, especially the 46% of our customers who live outside the U.S.

Enjoy!

Tutorini: Overview

I just posted a new tutorini for everyone to enjoy.

It's a general overview of Curio's main user interface elements. So I discuss the Organizer, Project Center, the various shelf modules, Sleuth, Dossier, etc.

This is just a quick tour; details for each element will be covered in future tutorinis.

It only took like a bazillion restarts (literally!) since I kept flubbing lines. So, while it's not perfect, I'm counting on Curio's amazing functionality to speak louder than my words. :-)

Curio 5.2

Yeppers, here's another update that I hope everyone will enjoy.

1. Right-click on a line and add one or more midpoints so you can easily create angled lines.
2. Choose Edit > Copy As > External Hyperlinks so you can create a "curio://" url to a specific figure or an idea space that can be placed in an email, web page, or a third-party application. When the link is clicked on in that application, Curio will automatically launch, if necessary, open that project and jump to the idea space and/or figure and highlight it. Sweet!
3. Choose Insert > Variables to insert variables such as "idea space name" or "idea space date added" which are then dynamically replaced as appropriate. This is a really great feature when combined with the Idea Space Templates shelf.
4. The Scrapbook shelf now supports drag-and-dropped text. A huge request.
5. The Status shelf now support "Tomorrow" as a roll-up date, plus some other goodies.
6. The Search shelf has a revamped UI for more easily saving search criteria, plus some other goodies. 

To get the full scoop, please read the release notes.

Enjoy!

Tutorini: Spread PDF

I've just posted our first mini tutorial — a tutorini, if you will — on the main Curio page. This video introduces the Spread PDF feature in Curio 5. It also touches on a few other subjects such as creating idea spaces, adding assets, positioning figures, and creating text figures.

More tutorinis will be posted as quickly as possible...

Curio sighting: mind mapping

Chuck Frey, the guru of mind mapping, just posted this nice write-up of Curio 5 over at the Mind Mapping Software Blog:

I’ve watched this product develop for several years, when it was primarily a mind mapping tool for the Mac. But now it has evolved into a full-fledged digital notebook and project management tool that you can use to capture and manage a wealth of information, ideas and knowledge.

House work

So, I'm sitting here working on a bug (yes, I know... we try to nip them as quickly as possible) and I realized that hunting for bugs is a lot like House.

That is, House the television series here in the U.S.

I recently watched an episode of House since it was recommended by my uncle who's a radiologist. What a great show!

The show always begins with a patient who has a crazy combination of symptoms and then the diagnosticians get to figure what's the cause of it. They use an approach called differential diagnosis to come to their decision.

It's like that when tackling bugs. A Curio customer is experiencing a particular problem. I mentally list several possible causes of that problem. Then I have to ask the right questions, perform some experiments, etc, to gradually whittle the diagnoses down until I get to the remaining diagnosis.

Of course, I have the advantage of a debugger. But many times I encounter situations where the debugger isn't particularly useful. Specifically, when dealing with a bug I can't reproduce on my machine.

So, now House DVD's are in my Netflix queue. You can also catch some episodes on Hulu if you are so inclined.

Curio 5.1

We just released Curio 5.1 with some yummy goodies that hopefully everyone will enjoy.

The big features:
- Project encryption for Pro users.
- Mega-über-super huge Spread PDF speed-up. A 700 page PDF now takes 12 seconds to spread.
- Date calendar popup for the date controls.
- Header and footers when printing with idea space name and number.
- Presentation Mode now supports the Apple Remote and multi-touch gestures.

A subtle feature that I'm personally thrilled to get working: Hyperlinks within a text figure now appear as links (aka blue text with underlines) even when not being edited.

And a bunch of other little fixes and features.

Curio 5.1 is a free upgrade for existing Curio 5 customers so go grab it! :-)

Overview videos

From over at our forums, Curio user DaveGaddis at BoundlessMe was nice enough to put together some overview videos of Curio in action. Excellent work, Dave!


Overview Part 1




Overview Part 2

Curio 5 is now available!

Phew. After months of hard work and long days, we're very pleased to announce that Curio 5 is now available.

Please note that it does require Mac OS X 10.5 or greater.

It's packed with a ton of new features such as the Status shelf, iCal Synchronization, Idea Space Templates, collapsible lists and mind maps, figure styles, beefed up Scrapbook, cross-project linking, the Inspector Bar, plus so much more!

We hope you enjoy it and spread the word to your friends and colleagues. Also, we hope you like the new website. Please feel free to drop us a line and let us know what you think.

Random musings

I saw The Dark Knight last Thursday at the local IMAX. One of the best movies I've ever seen, and I thoroughly believe Heath Ledger should posthumously receive Best Actor. I also felt the background music was incredible. My favorite you can sample here by playing song #1. You can feel the darkness envelop you. Definitely see the IMAX version since Nolan (aka Mr. Memento) filmed 28 minutes of it using IMAX cameras. I had to get in line an hour early since it's selling out like crazy, but it was well worth it.

The latest New Yorker has a fascinating article on how our brains produce insight: that "aha!" moment when you spontaneously figure out a solution. Sadly this article, "The Eureka Hunt" isn't online -- at least not yet. The trick is a delicate mix of concentrating on a problem, all left brain, but then relaxing or placing the problem set into the background so your right brain can produce that flash of insight. This background processing is key, and is why so many insights occur when you aren't actively analyzing the problem. Taking a shower, the scientists note, is a great way to induce this kind of relaxation.

I've had a yucky cold the past few days. I've never been good at sitting around waiting to recover so this has been a very trying time. But I'm getting in a lot of good reading. :-)

If you're ever in Durham, I encourage you to check out Blue Corn Cafe. Their creations always excite your taste buds -- even when you have a cold. Also, while in Durham, check out Rue Cler which is now one of my favorite restaurants.

Much has been written about Randy Pausch and his death a few days ago. If you haven't seen his Last Lecture then definitely watch it now.

I'm unbelievably excited about Curio 5. While admittedly somewhat biased, I do think it's pretty awesome. (Another teaser: embedded, interactive WebViews.) Its grand debut is right around the corner so stay tuned!

Update: Arg! I forgot that we already mentioned WebViews in an earlier blog posting. Okay... let's see. Do expandable/collapsible lists and mind maps whet your appetite? :-)