Mindful Ink

One of the strange differences between Mac and Windows software is the prevalence of personal information managers on the Mac. DevonThink, Tinderbox, Yojimbo, Soho Notes, yada yada yada. And all of them do more or less the same thing, though occasionally in very different ways. For many college students, such software offers a great resource if only they knew about it and how to use it.

My favorite of these these is Curio. It has a decent price point and huge feature set - and, quite frankly, I believe it to be just about the best piece of software on the Mac. The other of these programs I use regularly is Yojimbo, but not as often - Yojimbo is where I keep random scraps of info I want to keep. I used to use it all the time, but if you are syncing it with .mac (and honestly, this syncing is the primary reason I use it) it takes a billion years to load and often freezes up (and their support, quite frankly, is poor.) But, I keep serial numbers and recipes and handy resources I want to make sure I have if the website in question ever goes down.

Curio I’m absolutely in love with, but never quite feel like I’m maximizing its usage. And while the developers have a nice demo file with it, and finally a good manual, and even some “usage scenarios” on their website - I feel they really drop the ball when it comes to publicizing their product. It really is one of the most innovative and solid pieces of Mac software out there, but hardly anyone knows about it.And even then, what to do with it? As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big advocate of community with software. Some forums, a blog, a file repository - they can do a lot to increase the power and value of software. Curio drops the ball here completely. Things like reusable custom page templates and a place for people to share them would go a very long way, but neither exists. Unfortunately, the product is not popular enough to warrant a secondary site to do this - it’d have to be Zengobi (the makers of Curio) for this to work.

One of the strongest aspects of Mac software, and the Mac world in general, is community - and Zengobi, and so many other software companies fail to harness this vital resource. Still, if you use a Mac - do yourself and take a look at Curio.

For now, here’s a couple of things:

• The whiteboard I used to prepare a paper/presentation over Yeats last year: Click here.
• A note taking template I created in Curio, I’ve turned it into a printable pdf for anyone to use: Note Template

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OSX, Software, Templates