Every once in a long while a program comes along that is genuinely different, that takes an old problem and offers a new solution or novel way of working. Curio from Zengobi is just such a program.

Of course when trying to describe something truly new there is the problem of comparing it to another program that we already use. There really isn’t anything like Curio around on any platform. Zengobi describes it this way:

Curio is the ultimate brainstorming and project management application — a truly flexible and powerful environment which promotes visual thinking for gathering and shaping your ideas, while managing all the notes and documents associated with your project.

Unfortunately that’s really nothing more than marketing speak. It sounds great but doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot. This may be one of those programs that you literally need to see to believe.

Think of a big, possibly really big, combination of white board and cork board with dozens, even hundreds of items pinned to it or written on it. You might have flow charts, photos, sticky notes, even manuscripts there. Everything is out in plain view and you can move things around to emphasize different relationships and groups. The core of Curio is a digital version of that cork board, allowing you to display and move your assets around.

It’s a white board, too, because you can work directly in Curio, creating flow charts, outlines and text. Sound useful? It is.

But that is just a small part of what Curio can do. It can hold photos, importing and exporting from iPhoto. It links with iCal, connecting item in Curio with iCal dates and to-dos. It has Quicktime and WebKit capability, so that it can hold and display any object or movie that you could use in Safari. It has the TextEdit text engine built in so it’s a decent text editor. I could go on, but you really have to download the 30 demo and give Curio a go to understand it.

Curio is billed as a project manager but I don’t quite get that. It is a brilliant brainstorming and asset management environment. The Pro ($129) version has #Dossier#, with built in planning forms but while those forms can be very useful, that feature seems kind of bolted on. They’re just forms that could be stored and printed elsewhere.

More interesting is the build in Web search feature, Sleuth, that connects with digital asset providers. What a stock photo? Search a stock photo agency directly in Curio and download the image into Curio for later use. Then link to it anywhere in your ##Idea Space## via Curio’s internal hyperlinking. In some versions you can also tag an item for searching/sorting convenience. Did I mention Sleuth? It’s an indexed search function that works very nicely.

Depending on which version you buy, you can also export Curio Idea Spaces to image, PDF email, or presentations. There are many more features and the authors add new updates regularly.

Prices start at $39 for the basic version, which is pretty crippled. It supports Idea Space creation but doesn’t export to anything usable. The $79 home version incorporates enough features to make Curio a genuine pleasure to use. There are also Academic and Pro versions for up to $129. Curio is not cheap.

If you are a visual thinker, like a graphic or web designer, you might find Curio to be indispensable. It is a brilliant integration of brainstorming and asset management tools in one space. Curio is a unique product that might just change the way you use your computer.

Or, if your are more categorical in your thinking, you may try it find that it doesn’t suit you. But, I’m guessing that you will be impressed with the genuine cleverness that went into this program.

Highly recommended

[rate 4.5]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 9:19 am and is filed under Software Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.