Zengobi's Blog

Curio 6.2's coming 'round the mountain

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-11-12T05:55:31-08:00

I'm excited to announce that Curio 6.2 will be released pretty soon and is available as a preview right now.

What's new? Curved and orthogonal multipoint lines? Check. A faster way of creating new multipoint lines? Check. A slew of index card enhancements? Check.

Not enough for you? Oh, fine. How about a bunch of zapped bugs? Figure styles resetting in tables & index cards? Zapped. Fuzzy table lines? Zapped. Slow mind map rendering while editing? Zapped. Bunch of other little creepy crawly bugs? Zapped.

Read about all the goodies in the Curio 6.2 release notes. Then give it a whirl by downloading the preview releases of Curio 6.2 Professional or Curio 6.2 Standard.

How to Write a Great Novel

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-11-09T05:21:37-08:00

Over the weekend I read a pretty interesting article called "How to Write a Great Novel" printed in Friday's edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Since we have a ton of writers using Curio I definitely think it's a must read to see how some of the pros construct a novel. I loved the references to index cards and creating collages as that's a perfect application for Curio! :-)

Couple of Curio sightings

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-11-01T15:09:49-08:00

Here are a couple of nice posts I found this Halloween weekend:

Shane Mac's Blog

This is basically a must have (my top recommended program) and should be the first step in putting Microsoft Project into the garbage.

A Writer's Blog

But, then I happened to stumble onto the Zengobi site. That bliss [that] followed thereafter is an understatement…

Makes my heart warm... :-)

Curio 6.1 index cards video tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-10-13T10:28:57-07:00

Curio 6.1 with index cards has been released! And here's a quick video tutorial showing it in action:

An additional note is that if you select one or more index cards and copy them to the clipboard, or choose File > Export Selected Figures As > Text, you'll get a nice text output of all your notes which is great for importing into other applications.

Curio 6.1 includes another big feature for many of our customers: a new Decoration image well on the Flags inspector panel. Just drag-and-drop an image into that image well and it will appear as an adornment next to all your other figure flags. This makes it super-easy to quickly associate an image with another figure without needing to create a new custom flag via Curio > Preferences > Flags.

The key difference between a custom flag and a decoration? Custom flags are searchable in the Search shelf while a decoration is, er, simply a decoration. So definitely keep that in mind.

Anyway, Curio 6.1 has lots of other goodies (color pickers show the currently selected color, exported pngs/tiffs are transparent, smarter table cell pasting, tons of nasty bug fixes, etc) so please read the release notes to get all the nitty-gritty.

More features are coming so definitely stay tuned to our blog for the latest news. :-)

6.1 sneak peek

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-10-23T16:30:18-07:00

Oooooo... index cards.....

Thanks!

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-09-22T12:09:30-07:00

Just wanted to drop a quick note thanking everyone for the wonderful comments and feedback we've received since Curio 6's launch.

And, to return the favor, thanks back to all of you for putting up with the server snafus and other launch hiccups. I believe things are smooth now but let me know if anyone out there has problems.

As everyone in the forums knows, Curio 6.1 will have native index card support (hugely popular request in the forums!) so stay tuned for more news soon.

Server fun

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-09-15T09:21:16-07:00

We're having some rare issues with our hosting servers today. So, in the meantime, this blog is probably the best way to reach out to everyone.

Our hosting server at WebIntellects has been down twice so far today either entirely or at least when trying to send or receive email.

We're trying to get everything going as quickly as possible and I do appreciate everyone's patience.

Update: I just received word that they are relocating our website to another physical server which will hopefully resolve these issues. This should be done within a couple of hours (by 2pm Easter Daylight Savings Time, or 18:00 GMT).

Curio 6!

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-09-08T06:38:41-07:00

As you probably noticed from our home page or the main Curio page, Curio 6 has been released!

Curio 6 has tons and tons of new features — including native figure tables, figure stencils (Pro only), custom flag icons, branch coloring — plus, oodles of enhancements to existing features to make using Curio more natural and fun.

In addition to reading all the juicy details in the release notes you may also want to check out the new videos near the bottom of the main Curio page which show many of the new features in action.

We, of course, offer discounted upgrade pricing for all current customers of Curio 5 or earlier. Check out our online store or academic store for more details.

Snow Leopard and Curio

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-08-29T08:01:42-07:00

There are a couple of minor issues with Curio 5.4.4 and Snow Leopard. Specifically, text figures don't appear in HTML and image exports, and there are some quirks in the color picker so use Format > Show Colors as a workaround.

As soon as we pick up the release of Snow Leopard this morning we'll verify our fixes and get a 5.4.5 release out to the world.

Also, we've briefly postponed Curio 6's release to verify its compatibility with the release of Snow Leopard. You can expect it to appear the next few days!

Update: Curio 5.4.5 has been released so do a Curio > Check for Updates to grab it.

Curio 6 preview: figure stencils!

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-08-20T11:04:04-07:00

Time for another Curio 6 teaser: figure stencils!

Figure stencils allow you to easily create, re-use, and share frequently used figures and grouped figures.

It's perfect for boilerplate text items, or mind map, list or table templates, or various types of lines and arrow styles, or geographic maps, or floor plans, or garden plans, or UI prototypes, etc.

Just drag an idea space containing your stencils into the new Stencils shelf and, poof, the contents are snarfed up and stored in the Stencils repository where they are accessible to any project.

You can drag all the elements from a stencil to your idea space or double-click on the stencil to drill-down and find a specific individual stencil element.

Stencils can be organized into one or more custom collections so you can add a stencil to your Favorites, School, and Latest Project collections.

Like Idea Space Templates, Figure Stencils is a Curio Pro-only feature so there's another good reason to upgrade to Pro if you haven't already.

Stay tuned for more news about the upcoming Curio 6 release!

Art & Copy

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-08-17T10:28:37-07:00

Excuse the brief interruption to our Curio 6 update stream but I just watched this fascinating movie trailer for Art & Copy on Apple's Trailers site.

A significant number of Curio users are in the design community and I think this would be a great film for many of them to check out when it's released in the next few weeks.

It's easy to ridicule ads but you have to admit the great ads ("Just Do It," "I Love NY," "Where's the Beef?," "Got Milk," "Think Different") are examples of creative genius and the people behind them should certainly be admired.

Assuming the film shows some of the behind-the-scenes work behind these flashes of inspiration then it would be well worth the price of admission.

You can learn more and see the trailer in Flash form on the official movie website.

Curio 6 preview: search enhancements

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-08-10T11:41:43-07:00

I thought I'd mix up some big features, like tables, with some of the smaller enhancements we've added to Curio 6.

So, here an example refinement new to Curio 6:

If you use the Search shelf to search for some text that starts with a pound sign (#) then we'll look for the word as a tag. Thus, searching for #legal will do a search for a tag named legal. Note that normally text searching for just legal would return any results which contain that word in the figure's text, asset contents, notes, and tag. Thus, prefacing it with a pound sign is a fast shortcut to choosing it from the Search shelf's Tags list since it will only return an exact tag match.

Nice power-user feature, but let's go a bit further:

The Curio Spotlight importer has been updated to include any used tags and #tags with a project's scanned metadata. This means if the tag legal was used in a project then legal and #legal will be in the resulting Spotlight metadata for that Curio project.

So let's bring this home:

All of those changes means that if you use Spotlight to search for #legal, you'll see all projects that use the Curio tag legal, and if you then choose one of those projects from Spotlight's results list, Curio will launch and open that project and automatically do a search for the specific tag named legal.

Cool, huh?

This is great, personally speaking, because if I use Spotlight to search my machine for legal, I end up with way too many results. So, by using Spotlight to search for #legal, I can find only those places where I'm using the Curio tag called legal.

To take this a step further, one could use the Finder's Get Info Spotlight Comments area to add these kind of hashtags (to use Twitter's lingo). So I can add #legal to some of my non-Curio documents as a Spotlight Comment and they'll show up in Spotlight's results as well. For the über-organized, this is a pretty nifty way to go.

More Curio 6 teasers soon.... :-)

Curio 6 shipping soon!

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-08-05T03:42:45-07:00

Curio 6's release is right around the corner!

Filled with lots of big features and wonderful enhancements along with the usual potpourri of tweaks and fixes.

The big feature of Curio 6 is... tables!

Yeppers, native integrated tables. Complete with row and column headers and footers. Fully customizable style support so you can change the look of your table with a click. Cells support all the usual figure adornments such as checkmarks, flags, start/due dates, priorities, and ratings.

Easily drag images, text, weblinks, movies, and documents directly into a table cell from your idea space or perhaps another collection or even Safari or the Finder. Likewise, simply drag items out of your table to the idea space or another collection.

Want to create a quick matrix of photos? Create a table then drag and drop a ton of images to the table figure. Curio will automatically add rows as needed to nicely show off your images.

Want to show some Excel or Numbers data? No problem. Create a table then copy/paste a selection of cells from either app and paste into Curio. Curio will automatically grow columns and rows to encompass the pasted data. You can also go in the other direction: copying a selection of Curio table cells for pasting into Excel or Numbers.

And, of course, Curio's tables fully support CSV importing and exporting.

I'll talk more about the upcoming Curio 6 release over the next few weeks so stay tuned for more details. And all customers who purchased a new or upgrade license to Curio 5 on or after July 1st, 2009 will receive a complimentary upgrade to Curio 6 when it is released.

New volume discounting

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-07-10T07:35:54-07:00

We just posted new volume discounting brackets for retail and academic orders, as follows:

Quantity 2-9: 10% off
Quantity 10-19: 20% off
Quantity 20-49: 30% off
Quantity 50-99: 40% off
Quantity 100-: 50% off

Now volume discounting starts at just 2 users, instead of 5, and the discount goes up much faster than previously.

Buy more, save more. Go Curio! :-)

Publish to MobileMe

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-07-09T10:56:10-07:00

Curio's publish to MobileMe feature has been a big hit with our customers for years, so several were understandably distressed when Apple sent out an email saying that the MobileMe HomePage service was going to be terminated on July 7th.

Well, that date has come and gone and it looks like all is well.

Apple simply discontinued the HomePage web-based application that people used to use to manage their photos, videos, and personal websites. In fact, I used it for a while to post pics of the family. Apple wants people to use the new MobileMe gallery functionality and iPhoto sharing features, instead.

So, the homepage.mac.com domain is still running just fine which means you can still use Curio's publish to MobileMe feature to export your Curio idea spaces to the web for sharing.

NYT: "Zengobi Curio Does Everything"

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-06-30T03:44:40-07:00

A review of Curio made it to the main technology page of the New York Times website. It's a newsfeed inclusion from an article on TheAppleBlog by Nick Santilli.

Needless to say, I was thrilled, honored, and rendered speechless when my eyes passed over the words "Zengobi Curio" while scanning the NYTimes this morning. A nice way to wake up that's for sure. :-)

Yippee for Curio!

Curio around the world

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-06-22T10:16:06-07:00

A French video review and now a review in the Czech language by Lukáš Gregor.

Curio is certainly making its way around the world!

Video overview of Curio

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-06-19T08:07:49-07:00

JenM4e has just posted a fantastic 30-minute video overview of Curio 5 for Débuter sur Mac. Note that it's all in French so this is a great chance to practice your French language skills.

She hits on all the major features in Curio and even most of the minor ones.

Thanks, JenM4e!

The walk

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-06-09T13:12:11-07:00

Yesterday, thanks to very cool final release of Safari 4, I had to do what I call "the update walk". Let me explain.

I generally first hear about a new software update from Apple via one of the RSS feeds I follow. And, because I'm eager to grab the latest and greatest, I launch Software Update on my main Mac to grab the update.

While that's scanning my system to determine what updates I need, I walk to my secondary Mac and launch Software Update. And then I immediately walk over the laptop and do the same there.

Then I go back to the first, click Install Updates and type my admin password. It starts to download and install the updates.

While that's working, I do the same at the second Mac and then the laptop.

By the time I'm done with the laptop, I'm back to the first Mac where I almost always have to click "Restart" to restart the Mac. Ditto the two other machines.

Then I log into the main machine. While it logs in and starts up my plethora of apps, I log into the other two machines.

And, yes, then I'm finally done and I can sit down at my main Mac and continue working on Curio, with a warm contented feeling that all my Macs have the latest and greatest from Apple.

Oh sure, I could just wait until all the Macs have downloaded the updates all on their own in the background sometime during the next 24 hours or so. But then my Macs are out of sync and I have a "Install" and then a "Restart" button staring at my face when I run to grab the laptop or go use the second machine.

Ahem...

All whining aside, I'm of course thrilled with all of the updates! And, in general, the walk is not a problem whatsoever.

It's just when I do this walk for a new iTunes, then QuickTime, then Airport Utility, then Digital Camera RAW converters, then iPhoto, then iLife, and then Safari — all since June 1st — I get a bit exhausted trying to stay hip and up-to-date. :-)

Wacom driver update

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-06-01T12:06:27-07:00

Some of our customers have had some jagged drawing experiences with Curio's pens and brushes and Wacom's Bamboo and Graphire tablets. I just found out that Wacom recently released a Driver 5.1.1-1 for OS X 10.4 & 10.5 that incorporates some fixes which already existed in their Intuos professional tablet drivers.

With the Bamboo tablet I just received this past weekend, scribbling seems to be nice and smooth — at least as smooth as the Intuos 2 I've had — so you may want to check it out.

Cinco de Mayo Sale!

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-05-04T07:25:32-07:00

¡Hola!

In celebration of Cinco de Mayo we're throwing a 25% off sale this week only! Just enter CINCO for the coupon code at the Zengobi store or our academic store when purchasing new or upgrade Curio licenses.

This is a limited time offer so act now!

Sighting: Best Mind Mapper

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-03-28T10:59:23-07:00

I just received an email regarding a recent LifeHacker post where they are discussing the best mind mapping application. I was happy to see that Curio is mentioned a view times in the comments.

If you want to give a shout-out for our little app then we'd certainly appreciate it! To vote for Curio your comment entry on LifeHacker must be "VOTE: Zengobi Curio".

Admittedly some of Curio's mind mapping functionality pales in comparison to some of the über feature-rich mind mappers out there. However, I think one concept that makes Curio unique is the ability to have multiple mind maps, plus outlines, plus notes and image collages, all on the same idea space. It's that freeform whiteboard environment that makes Curio pretty amazing, IMHO. And, of course, we do have some new cool mind mapping features planned for upcoming releases. :-)

Email bag: Address Book photos

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-03-11T08:15:07-07:00

The question from a customer:

When I drag an Address Book contact into a Curio idea space, why do I see a generic index card icon instead of the contact's associated photo?

My response:

In Address Book, choose the Address Book > Preferences menu item. Then click the vCard icon. Then check "Export photos in vCards".

Email bag: project setup

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-02-23T12:55:06-08:00

A customer recently wrote asking about how to use Curio to manage a large project which would normally be driven by a single, long multi-page outline. He was wondering about how to lay out this outline, how it would render, how to share this kind of project, and if he should change his normal approach to project management to take advantage of Curio's features.

Here's my response:

Curio is more like a graphical layout application than an outlining application or word processor, so you're in charge of pagination and things like that. Curio simply renders the list/mindmap/image/text where you put it.

I would wholeheartedly think about creating multiple outlines instead of one big outline. I think that's one concept that is a bit difficult to grasp for new Curio users, but very liberating when put into practice. Remember you can have an unlimited number of idea spaces, each containing one or more outlines, all within the same project.

In OmniOutliner, you (and I for that matter) have single outlines that are huge. In MS Word, I have single documents that are huge. But with Curio you can segment your thoughts so you can focus on them individually, while still keeping them together in a single project.

With Curio, pretend you have a room with dozens or even hundreds of whiteboards (aka idea spaces). On that whiteboard, you'll create an outline, a mind map, some scribbles, some images, etc. Each whiteboard allows you to really concentrate on a specific issue in your project.

In the same way, you can use Curio's idea spaces to address and focus your attention on specific issues. Then maybe even take advantage of Curio's "jump actions" so you can easily click your way to a remote "whiteboard" where you've researched something else.

So you don't have one huge outline or mind map, you have dozens of smaller collections, connected together like a big neural net. :-)

(Personally I find myself getting lost within my larger OmniOutliner outlines. That's why their "hoist" feature is so useful -- so you can concentrate on a specific part of your outline without getting lost in the hugeness of your outline. So, think of Curio's idea spaces as an automatic way to help you concentrate on specific issues.)

With all of your idea spaces of reasonable size, when you go to share your project with others either via PDF or HTML export, then each idea space should scale nicely to a single page allowing them to easily see what's going on.

I thought this conversation with a customer might be useful to others out there. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or comments.

Minor update

noreply@blogger.com (George) — 2009-02-05T06:08:00-08:00

We released a minor update today (5.4.2) which squashes all the bugs reported to us over the past few weeks.

In addition, it adds a handful of little features:

Press Shift-Spacebar at any hierarchical level in a list or mind map and all figures at that level throughout the collection will toggle their expand/collapse state.
You can now convert between a list or mind map via the right-click context menu.
Improved options in the context menu when right-clicking multiple selected asset figures.
The Library now shows the asset filenames with their extensions so you can more easily tell the difference between several identically named files.
If you hover the mouse over an idea space in the Organizer, you are now told if it's marked as private or not and, if not, its idea space number which makes printing a selected range of idea spaces much easier.