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Curio is an interactive animatronic toy you can program and play with (hands-on)
It's always nice to have a little buddy around that's trained to do what you want it to. Some of us get dogs or other furry creatures, but a start-up called Curio is hoping there's a good chunk of folks who would like to have a robotic companion, too. You see, Curio is a cute little bot platform filled with a pair of motors that move its mouth and head, and has a small LCD screen that serves as its face. The toy clips to any smartphone or tablet running the associated app, which in turn allows users to set its facial expression, determine its movements and even tell it what to say. While the app will come with a bunch of pre-set actions, expressions and sounds, its makers are also working up a programming portion of the app, so tinkerers can create their own custom Curio mods. This programming interface is a series of parallel timelines that allow you to chronologically lay out different facial expressions, movements and audio simply by dragging and dropping them where you like. And Curio's built to be physically customized, too. Company founder Mike Kneupfel thinks that his bots can take advantage of the 3D printing craze by letting folks make their own tails, ears, and other accessories that clip onto Curio. He tells us that he aims to put a bunch of accessory blueprints on MakerBot's Thingiverse to make it easy for folks to print stuff out, but he's hoping that users will get creative and design their own as well.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Curio
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Rube Rubenstein from BrainBlast Games shows us the crazy side of 2D sidescrollers with Curio. What's your game called and what's it about? The Game is Curio and it's about Ron Templeton III's plight. Everything that happens in the back story, which you unlock as your progress, will lead up to where gamers first meet Ron, though it doesn't stop there. This battle that fans undertake in Curio is, has been and will be lifelong for Ron.What inspired you to make Curio? 2D side-scrollers are age-old and a genre we are crazy about. They are not always easy, but we wanted players to focus intently on keeping Ron sane, while always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Also, I was born in a mental asylum and Victor Radar down the hall from me, so it just seemed like a natural and familiar backdrop. Sometime creative juices flow easiest when the subject matter is personal.
New Core version of Curio in the Mac App Store
We've mentioned the brainstorming, mind mapping, project managing notebook application Curio a few times before. The full version, Curio Professional, runs US$169.99, and the Standard version is $119.99, and both are well worth it in this blogger's opinion. Today, however, Curio announced a new Core Edition in the Mac App Store, with a tasty price of $39.99. The Core version retains many of the essential tools from the full versions, including the freeform note-taking and brainstorming style of the original. You can place rich text figures, flowcharts, mind maps in various configurations, shapes with gradient fills and shadow effects, connection lines, tables and more right into your workspaces. You can also embed documents, images, movies and other media. You have lists, outlines, and even to-do lists available. Sort your ideas on index cards and rearrange them in the freeform space. Tagging, checkmarks, percent complete, priorities and ratings, as well as advanced search features make project management easy. There is also a wide array of import and export options, which keeps your data portable and makes presenting your ideas a simple task. At the new price of $39.99, it's worth a look for users who've been holding out, as well as for folks who've never heard of Curio before. While there's not a free trial of the Core version available (Mac App Store-style), Zengobi just informed me that there is, in fact, a 15-day trial version (extendable to 60 days) of Core available at www.zengobi.com/curio/core. Consult the comparison matrix to see what features are available in the Core version vs. full versions.
Curio 6.1 gets even more creative and productive
I wrote about Curio last year, and the past few months have brought quite a few additions to this creative brainstorming and productivity powerhouse. We already saw Evernote integration, and between the last two releases (6.0 and 6.1) Curio has added support for tables, "figure stencils," better copy-as-text, and a lot more. The figure stencils are great, allowing you to create figures such as mind maps, tables, notes, lists, etc., and save them for re-use. For example, I have stencils for different styles of lists with skeleton headers already included, and "Approved" and "Rejected" labels to drag onto mockups. The tables and index cards allow for a lot of visual organization within a space, just in case you're not an entirely free-form kind of person. The full release notes for the latest version (6.1) are available here. Curio is available in 2 versions, both with free trials. The Professional Edition is $149US and the Standard version is $99US (comparison), academic discounts available. Version 6 is a paid upgrade for 5.x users, and upgrade prices start at $49US, depending on what you're upgrading from and to. If you want to see Curio in action, check out the "Tutorinis" at the bottom of the Curio homepage.
Evernote meets Curio, you save some money
Right around Macworld-time, Zengobi released Curio 5.4, which included a healthy dose of Evernote integration. I had fallen for Evernote before I really figured out Curio, but lately I've found both to be key elements in my organization arsenal. I especially like Evernote's mobile capabilities and cross-platform sync. At home, I organize nearly all of my projects and related materials in Curio. Now, with Curio 5.4 and Evernote's very thorough API, we get the best of both worlds. All of the notes I take on my iPhone by photographing, recording and typing show up automatically -- and with full search capabilities -- when I sit down at my Mac. I also do a lot of research on the web, and this new integration means I can clip web pages to one place -- Evernote -- and have the information immediately available in Curio. Evernote's various software clients are free, and premium accounts (allowing for any filetype and much more storage) are available for $5/month or $45/year. Curio is more pricey; the standard version is $99, and the pro version is $149 (there are significant academic discounts available). If you're already a Curio user but not an Evernote user, I'd recommend you sign up for a free Evernote account and start enjoying the benefits of the integration. You can always upgrade to a premium account if you find it indispensable (a fairly common occurrence). If you're an Evernote user considering Curio, use the coupon code EVERNOTE at Zengobi's online store (or Academic Store) to get a 20% discount on a Curio purchase. If you use neither, and don't want to, shouldn't you have given up reading this about a paragraph ago? Nah, thanks for sticking around.
Friday Favorite: Curio
I've been looking for a project management solution for a long, long time. I've tried everything from homemade systems -- based on folders and Spotlight tagging -- to attempting to bend applications such as Bento to do what I really want: collect my notes, work-in-progress files, communications and brainstorms in one place with a fluid way to associate them, organize and rearrange them, and find them quickly ... without forcing me into a single mode of thinking. The first time I looked at Curio, I had what I've learned is a fairly common reaction to it: I balked at the apparent lack of structure. As every designer knows, a blank page is a scary thing. It was a few months later that I was reading an article about it which re-sparked my curiosity (no pun intended), and I dug back in. It was at that point that I realized that Curio was the project management, note-taking and brainstorming solution I'd been looking for, or at least as close as I've found so far. Read on for an in-depth look at Curio's possibilities ... and a 10% off coupon code!
Curio 5.3 is out
I'm currently working on a piece detailing exactly why Zengobi's Curio has become a favorite of mine, especially in the area of project management and brainstorming, but also in general as a truly enjoyable-to-use application. In the meantime, though, I thought I'd better get an announcement out for version 5.3, released today. For those unfamiliar, Curio is a note-taking, brainstorming, to-do managing, file-gathering application which works in a (surprisingly productive) free-form manner. It's similar in concept to Circus Ponies Notebook, but I find it to be even more flexible and powerful. Version 5.3 adds to an impressive feature list with customizable print headers and footers, the ability to convert lists to mind maps and vice versa, as well as an importer for AquaMinds NoteTaker. Detailed release notes are available here. Version 5.3 is a free upgrade for all Curio 5 users, and upgrade pricing is available at the Zengobi store. The regular version of Curio is $99USD, and a Pro version is available for $149USD (find out what the difference is here). Academic discounts are available, and a free 15-day trial can be downloaded on the Curio page.
Curio Back to School special
If you're looking for a creative application to collect and organize notes, ideas and more, check out Curio. Curio provides a free-form interface for collecting pages which can contain notes, images, links to files, mind maps, sketches -- just about anything you'd need to get ideas and notes out of your head and into your computer. Zengobi, the makers of Curio, are celebrating the "Back to School" season with TUAW and offering 20% off the academic price of the software. The Pro version retails at $149USD, but it's only $69USD in the academic store. With the discount, students can pick up a great app for about $55USD. Enter TUAWBTS at the academic store to take advantage of the offer, and hurry, it's only good for today (August 27th).
Curio Basic offered for free until midnight, August 7th
Remember Curio from Zengobi, that unique brainstorming and project management app we found a couple weeks ago? As a thanks to all the publicity they've been getting lately the company has decided to offer Curio Basic for free - but only until midnight, EDT on Tuesday, August 7th. All you need to do is enter some basic information at the promotion page, and a license (a $39 value) will be emailed to you. Definitely note, however, that one of Zengobi's terms is that they can cancel this offer at any time (probably in case they get slammed with too many requests), so I would recommend you run, don't walk, to snag your copy. After all: you can't beat 'free'.
Brainstorming and project management with Curio
It's too bad I didn't know about Curio from Zengobi when I was writing the Get Organized post, as it seems to take quite an interesting approach to collecting, jotting down and organizing information. Billed as an app that "promotes visual thinking gathering and shaping your ideas", Curio definitely seems to be more like a sketchpad than many other similar applications. You can literally place anything anywhere on the page, and includes tools for sketching and drawing - just look at the screenshot which includes an image, lists, an embedded video and some chicken scratch.Curio doesn't stop there though. It also includes a project center, presentation mode, a powerful search companion, tags, LinkBack support, project archiving, web/.Mac publishing and iPhoto exporting. I haven't played with this app yet, but I'm downloading a demo as I type up this post to play with later. Some features, however, are only included in certain editions, so check out Zengobi's feature comparison chart to determine which edition is right for you. A demo is available, while full licenses start at $39.
