Curio 14 released

Posted by mprazoff
May 24, 2020 at 03:53 AM

I agree that the utility of Curio can be hard to grasp, possibly because it is not directly comparable to other programs. For a few years, I was doing a weekly Idea Space in Curio and daily diary updates in the now defunct Circus Ponies Notebook. After a few years, I went back to review both and was surprised to discover that they sounded like they were written by two completely different people. The text based outlines in CP Notebook captured my dominant hemisphere, while Curio captured creative, non-verbal parts of me. One captured what I did and what I had for supper, while Curio captured my hopes, beliefs and aspirations.

While Curio can be used as an outline-based, linear note taker, I agree that it is a bit cumbersome compared with programs designed expressly for that purpose. But it excels in other areas. I have used Curio to mock up logos and visual campaigns, and to find the best words to describe a business for use on a web-site. I have used it to take heavily visual notes on software use, where screenshots, arrows and callouts all help the final product. I most recently used it to create “mood boards” of various solutions for a home renovation project, with different idea spaces for flooring, lighting and so on. I generally do not find mind mapping useful because nodes can only contain a few words. In Curio I can create a few sentences and style them with a background and text box. Through use of clicking and modifier keys, similarly styled text boxes can be created using a variety of arrows and connectors. As I work out the flow of software use, I can place a software’s icon onto this kind of map - and Curio maintains a library of these often used images, while new ones can be found using the Sleuth function in Curio.

Perhaps the best description of Curio is that it is “thinking software.”