January 2022 Software of the Month: Curio

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This is a “wondering” post. I think the Hook app has changed things quite a bit in terms of how I’d potentially use Curio.

I did a small test and Hook works great with Keynote also. As an integrative visual organizer Keynote + Hook may end up being the better direction for me to go. Not completely sure right now. I’ll simply have to play around more with Curio. But before Hook came on the scene I never would have imagined Keynote as an alternative to Curio. Perhaps Curio will still be better for my purposes.

Either way Hook is an important addition to my workflow and makes it much more pleasant/easy to very easily incorporate links to “other stuff” I’d want to use in a project.

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I found a post on Zengobi’s forum about how to do deep links to items (Idea Spaces, Figures) using Hook.

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Agree, this is the “visual integration” that helps me so much. As I mentioned before, I’m a longtime OneNote user and migrated to Curio when I was able to use a Mac at work. I had the paradigm down, but found Curio much more powerful although with considerable learning curve especially for features OneNote doesn’t provide. Since I’ve had to shift back to MS at work, I migrated back to OneNote there and use it excessively. However I really miss Curio still. As much as I’m a OneNote “expert” at work, I will not use it outside!

Using OneNote still has many of the same challenges though — how do I want to organize within the construct of notebook, a folder, a group of folders, pages, subset of pages for what I want to do? How do I prefer to use tags and links? Do I want to leverage the features with Outlook integration (like actions or notes for Outlook meetings)? What templates do I want? What about a KanBan style of use? Is that better than the tags and ability to summarize all tags with those checked and not? Do I want to implement GTD, and if so, what’s the “best” way to do that? What style of tagging should I use? How should I “standardize” across everything I do? Do I want to manage and share with my team? How so? Shared notebooks? Do I want to use Sharepoint? How do I train them in the benefits and use of something that is already available on every machine we have — if they don’t want to learn something new regardless of the power?

These “challenges” are very similar as others have said here about Curio. It’s a bit of what’s necessary for the class of software. Very powerful and flexible which enables complex visual integration. However… it can be used for much simpler uses. Hence my suggestion to just dive in and use it for something of interest. The journey to understand and utilize all the features will be long and may not be fully justifiable for your uses, but can be rewarding if later you learn new use cases for it.

As for the comment about Curio having the opposite paradigm of other apps/environments —- I can only tell you how frustrated I get when I want to share or reference a link to a file or folder that is outside of OneNote or even to email someone from Outlook. Links and sharing within OneNote or to email from there, but not so much things outside of OneNote. It can be done, but it is not simple or quick, particularly when work doesn’t allow a “Dropbox”. Oh how I wish I could command-C and then paste-as a link (which is by the way how both OneNote and Curio do so within their software) from Windows! Although that is likely a MS limitation more so than anything else.

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I’ve used OneNote on and off since its inception, Windows and Mac, and I’ve never been able to find ways of working that fit my purpose. For all its good features, it always feels to me as if it was never properly finished.

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@anon41602260 Yikes, these quotes seem to indicate expertise does not generalize across domains! The description of Curio seems to be flailing without any clear direction.

Take notes. Organize files. Collect research. Brainstorm in mind maps. Track tasks with a to-do list. Drop in an equation. Sketch out an idea. Get more productive! Curio’s intuitive, freeform notebook environment provides all the integrated tools you need to be more productive and focus on getting things done.

More important than the vagueness, it doesn’t help pinpoint for potential users the key reasons to purchase and use the software. To be fair, at one point maybe this was a good selling point for Curio. But a lot has changed over the past 10 years. Various apps do some of these things much better than Curio at this point: e.g. taking notes and organizing files.

At this point I think the key selling point is Curio serving as an integrative visual organizer. A user is given a variety of ways of organizing materials: mind maps, idea graphs and much more. Just today I discovered and played around with the album feature. Very cool: a nice way for me to collect a group of “things”. In my case I was collecting a group of screenshots of various videos I would want to use when creating a new webpage. The album structure keeps it all well organized and coherent. More importantly within one idea space, or across several idea spaces, you can use a variety of different kinds of visual organizers: and this for me is the integrative part: you can assemble different kinds of organizational structures into a coherent whole that works best for you.

The other key thing not mentioned in the description is the critical role of linkages. Curio does offer deep links you can use in another app to go directly to a specific thing in Curio: that’s great. But realistically, at this point, Curio seems to me to be like Batman. And as we all know, Batman needs his Robin! And it seems Robin, in this somewhat pained analogy, is Hook.

Without Hook I can easily link to a regular weblink (e.g. a YouTube page, web page, etc.) but with Hook I can also link to non-typical things that aren’t weblinks: a page in NotePlan, a markdown document, a video on my HD, a ScreenFlow document, and on and on. My guess is that if Curio was marketed more as a dynamic duo people could easily visualize the benefits and power of the Curio/Hook combo.

I’ll still be playing a lot with Curio for this month … it really helps to take 30 days to focus on just one thing. But I almost need to ignore the marketing from Curio (and apparently a number of other apps also) and take the time to figure out what’s the true essence of this app.

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Can you not do this with aliases?

If you hold down the ⌥ (Option) key while dragging then Curio will create an alias to the original file. When you later double-click the file to open it on the idea space you will be opening the original file, not an embedded copy.

https://zengobi.com/curio/docs/20/figures/#insert-other-content

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Yes, you can do some of it with aliases. For other apps where you can do deep linking an alias wouldn’t work. Aliases are probably a better approach for some things though: e.g. images.

For those of us that already use Hook it’s become second-nature to do control-H and “hook”. So that can be faster for some folks like me.

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Somewhat ironically, I don’t use Hook to hook things together now.
I use it to copy deep links or markdown links to the clipboard, then paste those in other programs, like Curio.

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Yes, that’s how I use it also! Very fast, very efficient for me.

… I’ve never fully understood the value of “hooking a collection of things together” in Hook. It must be of value to some folks … but too ephemeral, perhaps too abstract, for my taste.

… but using hooked links to visually integrate disparate materials in Curio: that’s a winner for me! (I also use it in this simple way in other apps to create connections.)

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Agreed.
I’m still a little salty that my idea of using ^H (^C, ^M) as the shortcut was used without attribution, so I’ll hold onto my other ideas for improvement.

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Perhaps Curio (as Batman) doesn’t need a Robyn (Hook). But if I were marketing this app I would be highlighting and touting the various ways it can provide linkages: weblinks or aliases, or accommodate links via Hook. But bottom line the value of linking is not touted/promoted/explained clearly enough on the front page of Curio. It’s that important. Instead, info about aliases, e.g., is buried in the documentation. Of course it should be in the documentation, but it’s so important (I would contend) that it should also be part of the marketing.

At my university I’ve seen several Mac-using folks look at Curio, scratch their heads, and walk away not knowing why they’d want to use it. And these are reasonable and bright folks. They’ve looked at Curio because they saw some of the things I did with it … but at the purchase price they’d also want it to do more than what I showed them (quite reasonably).

… so as I re-explore Curio this month I’m also on something of a personal quest to imagine how I could better communicate what Curio is to my colleagues and friends. The Curio website itself hasn’t helped.

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In fairness, though, can any marketing quote for any software – or, perhaps, any product, actually explain to the user why they should buy and use that product? If the requirement is to define in a marketing statement “the key reasons to purchase and use the software”, then everyone who ever tries to write such a statement will fail. I really think demanding such a high barrier is unreasonable and unfair.

I’ll delete the post referred to, since my intent is not to denigrate any developers I quoted.

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What you write is fair enough re: marketing quotes. In the case of a few products the issue is a bit less of a marketing quote per se but mainly having a label, a category, so folks have an initial idea of its purpose. For example, if I say “product BB is an outliner I love” then people know the product is an outliner. They wouldn’t know specifically why I love it without more conversation, but at least they have a handle on the kind of tool it is.

… Curio isn’t the only product like this … but there are a small number of products where people just want to know what type of tool is it: hammer, saw, etc. And, to be very fair, in those cases it IS harder to describe what kind of tool they are.

As I’m exploring Curio more deeply I’m brainstorming (via this forum) how I would describe it as a tool. Others may have a very different (and very legit) short descriptions for Curio. For me, calling Curio an “integrative visual organizer” provides a unique reason why I would continue using and learning about it.

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Hmm … I understand the saltiness. But I also want to thank you for making this suggestion to the Hook folks. control-H is so intuitive. I can’t remember what the shortcut was previously … it worked (obviously) but this seemingly small suggestion to use “H” instead the previous shortcut made things a lot simpler and more intuitive relative to the previous shortcut. Seemingly small things like this can make a big difference in terms of the joy of using a product and in reduced friction. I was very happy this change was implemented. Thank you.

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I think it’s difficult because these apps help you (royal you) in doing whatever it is that you do, rather than imposing their idea of structure and function upon you.

I don’t use any “will-imposing” software at the moment (maybe Canvas), but one could perhaps compare Excel and Quick Books. You can do accounting with Excel, or use it as a database, or to wrangle some data, or many other uses, whereas QB dictates what you do and where you do it within the software.

You’re welcome!
That was my experience too, it “clicked.”
Now I just use it with ^C to copy a link, and ^M to copy a markdown link. This somewhat interferes with ^C in iTerm/Terminal, but keyboard maestro helps with that.

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Hi everyone! New member here. :raising_hand_woman: So glad to have found this forum with like-minded folks. I knew I was in the right place when @tomalmy mentioned using Circus Ponies Notebook. I too was lost when it went away. Since then I became an avid user of Evernote until the paid subscription started, and have yet to find the right solution. Tried OneNote several times on Mac and PC and found the same issues as many of you mentioned. Purchased DT3 a couple years ago. Still struggling with finding the best way to incorporate it into my workflow and I refuse to import files for fear of data loss. Downloaded Obsidian and abandoned it as it seems even more complex with an even steeper learning curve than DT3. I’m not a Markdown user (maybe I should learn?). My current method is keeping files organized in nested Finder folders and browser bookmarks. It’s a mess! As a doctoral student, teacher, and medical provider, I need someplace to take notes that will allow attaching PDFs, Word and PPT files, video links, etc. It sounds like Curio will be the right solution. And since it does not sync via the cloud it should be safe for confidential files. Thank you all for this idea.

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I wouldn’t want to dissuade you from trying Curio, but please be aware it is not a Finder replacement, and it can store files internally. “Organizer” for bookmarks and files is not a use case I would generally associate with Curio.

This, however, is an excellent use case for Curio!

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Thank you for your thoughts @anon41602260. Glad I am thinking about this app correctly. I find Curio’s ability to keep original files in their place in the Finder very appealing.

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Welcome, @BeckyS! :wave: I’m glad you’re here. Also, there are several PhD students (and profs) on the board.

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If you want to keep the original file in its original location, then option-drag the file into Curio. If you merely drag a file into Curio it will leave the file in the original location, but also make a copy that is stored within the Curio project package (folder). There is an option in each project’s settings to store the dragged-in files, or files created within Curio, in a sidecar folder (“Asset Library”) alongside the Curio project package.

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