Curio

Eric Heller - Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Harvard University

One could certainly say that Professor Eric Heller takes on projects with gusto.

First, he teaches chemistry and physics to the elite student population at Harvard University.

Next, his research group at Harvard studies quantum mechanics, scattering theory, and quantum chaos and publishes a number of academic papers.

And yet, with all of that in his daily life, he stills find time to produce and sell works of art based on his computer simulations.

With so much to juggle, Eric was a perfect candidate for Curio.

First Impressions

When Eric discovered Curio he was thrilled with its freeform environment, which is unlike most other note gathering applications.

"I was immediately impressed by not being confined to a &#$#@% outline format."

Curio's idea spaces allow Eric to place anything anywhere on the page, for truly uninhibited creative exploration. He can quickly and easily create freeform collages of notes, checklists, outlines, URL's, and images.

"As I continue to use Curio, I find it a marvelous piece of software. It changes the way I use my computer. Class notes on paper are gone!"

Perfect for Lectures

"I am a sloppy note writer yet my students clamor for my lecture notes. Before I would have to LaTeX the notes, which meant it didn't get done."

Fortunately, Curio has built-in support for graphic tablets which makes sketching and writing a piece of cake. Some of Curio's pens and brushes are even pressure-sensitive, adjusting their color saturation and brush size on-the-fly as you press harder on the tablet.

"Handwriting in Curio is a breeze on a tablet, because erasing, realigning, altering, copying equations etc. is so easy; essentially some of the copy/paste advantages of computer text have come to handwriting. The cleaned up notes, including graphics easily dropped into the mix, typed lines, equations dropped in from LaTex, etc are very useful and students have commented on how great they are. Hand drawn graphics are easy and have a nice quality."

"Producing such notes last term qualitatively improved my courses."

Perfect for Projects

Curio's project-based environment is the perfect way for Eric to keep track of his project notes, research, and associated documents. A single Curio project document file contains everything, including aliases to external documents, or those documents can be embedded within the Curio project for quick archiving and sharing.

And, with Curio's Project Center, Eric can easily categorize and switch between projects with a single click.

"I am starting to build legacy projects that give me some continuity; there might be a four week or six month hiatus in my getting back to an idea. Before, I would lose notes or if I found them I would lose track of url's, graphics, random ideas, etc. Now, all that stuff is together and always with me, which is a HUGE effect, since I travel a lot."

With Curio, Eric is more than ready to take on any number of projects as they arise.