My Review of Curio by Zengobi,
Finally, a tool that can effectively help you brainstorm, plan, layout, file, sort, store, manage & manipulate the many types of files, data and thoughts we use today !
This is a Mac OSX software, sorry PC users.
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Curio Improved My Workflow and Information Management!
Test and see if it improves yours too.
After first using this software for a day, I am now 'highly' impressed by Curio. It's vast flexibility was not clear to me at first introduction. A few hours and references to the user manual and videos had me mastering the immense functionality within !
Thanks Zengobi,
Anthony Roger
For years my Personal Quest has been to find a software tool for my Mac that effectively manages and stores research files, project data, links, multimedia, thoughts and mind maps and then allow me to 'FIND' my information easily.
For a cluttered Desktop does not maketh a good workplace !
Curio comes to the rescue here and comes close to the best I have ever used, in fact, I think it is the best, so I purchased the Pro version. It also comes in a Core and Standard versions. You can read about the differences on the Zengobi Curio Website and watch the demo video.
Now that said, the tools within Curio, such as tables and mind maps, are not of complex functionality, yet fine for basic work. You can drag in your spreadsheets and mind maps or create a shortcut for full functions your used to. The inbuilt tables have some neat other features though. Seem them in this video
Sorting My Digital Life & Project Management
Having used a number of tools over the years, the one that had came close to an overall digital asset management tool was 'The Personal Brain'. It too stores data in a very intuitive manner. Yet the Brain lacks the workspace flexibility I have been searching for. It would be grand it the two could integrate.
Having said that, Evernote, another popular note taking tool (cloud or desktop based) is now Integrated with Curio Standard or Pro!
I don't recommend leaving it on (connected) if your Evernote has thousands of files and tags like mine. It slows the workflow down. I moved (archived) most of my Evernote data to a local folder within Evernote to thin it out. This improved functionality in.
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| Evernote & Curio, Two of the best digital tools ! |
Curio is extremely flexible once you get the hang of using it, not that it is hard, just takes a few hours of use to get familiar with the interface.
It integrates well with most work flows and offers processes like tagging idea space items, prioritising, to do start and completes, check boxes, starring and web page archiving and dragging in most types of files as an alias or embedded into your idea spaces.
Here is what is really powerful yet takes a little getting used to.
You can gather thoughts, web links, resources, files, audio and videos into a space and each item can be tagged, prioritised, check boxed, or a start and complete date added. This allows all project resources to be laid out on a table so to speak in full view, yet each item may have a number of searchable attributes added.
The best way to describe Curio, is it's like a Multiple Desktop software. Yet that is not what it is but it does that brilliantly. Curio allows placing different project resources on different spaces and also linking them across spaces.
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| photo by e-magic |
This allows data segmentation.
√ Drag folders out of alphabetical order
√ Create 'Sections' to separate your work.
√ Experience a whole new way to work !
√ Use a Special 'HOIST' feature to hide items your not working with
My Long Quest Is At An End !
After years of searching, testing and buying various softwares to make digital work, projects, to do's and knowledge management manageable, I Feel I Finally Found it.
A great surprise has been the highly reliable support.
Thanks George and the Zengobi team.
Back to Curio I go...
Anthony Roger
Oh, I forgot the price...
At time of writing, from $42 for the Core version up to over $200 for a family pack Pro version with 5 licenses. There is academic pricing too. Best of all there is a 'Free' 60 day trial to give it a real good test run, check if your workflow improves...
Hope that helps.
Have a happy day
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