Mar 8 2004
Curio from Zengobi
It’s not too much to ask for you to put as much thought into organizing your ideas as you do your CD collection. However, aside from 5 page rants on our blogs, how many of us take time to put our ideas in a transferrable, and digestible form?
Curio is not only an idea organizer, it is an idea generator built around the way you think. The app itself is made up of three main areas: a HyperCard-reminiscent organizer, a brainstorming “Sleuth” and information Dossier about the project.
The slide-based idea organizer supports a series of idea spaces that can be organized into subsets. An idea space can hold text, drawing, shapes, movies and URLs. For easy sharing, you can package all these assets together when saving a project.
The Sleuth is a streamlined search browser which gives you easy access to stock photography, language resources, web searches and more. All of these references come from 3rd party web sites. Items found are easy to bring into the application.
The Dossier records project specific information. The Library gives you a nice rundown of all the assets you’ve used in your project. An Inspector, similar to Keynote’s provides formating options for objects.
Who is this application for? Idea-driven professionals. Particularly, I see Ad Agencies an others in project-based settings to find Curio invaluable. Curio enables you to set up complex concepts graphically and logically. So anyone needing to communicate a great pitch should use Curio.
Shortcomings? Well, there’s no “presentation mode”. You can get rid of the toolbars and go full screen, but it would be much easier to pop into a Power-Point style presentation. Also, while you can save projects packaged with all its assets, only other Curio users will be able to view it. You can export a PDF, but that is the extent of Curio’s export capabilities.
I liked Curio. I found it unique and functional. I’m not sure what I’d do with it, but its fun. Its value hinges on how Curio fits into your thought or production process.