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Even the most organized souls can still find themselves drowning ina sea of clippings and notebooks in search of one elusive idea. Curio Core 7 ( Mac App Store link) consolidates your thoughts into one useful digital space.Despite its arsenal of options, it mostly balances those powerfulabilities with admirable ease of use. Each of Curio Core s Project files houses a series of Idea Spacesfor your work. Like many of its other elements, Curio lets youchoose from a variety of preset Idea Space styles, from slickPowerPoint-style background gradients to replicas of notebook andgraph paper. You can then tweak and save those styles as your owncustom options. UI: Curio Core 7 s friendly and well-designed interfacenonetheless crowds out your working space on smaller monitors. Within each Idea Space, you can store hierarchical informationeither as a bullet-pointed list or a flowchart-like Mind Map, andconvert the same information from one form to the other and backagain. You can also create simple tables for more complex data, ordrop in index cards for brief thoughts and observations. For powerusers, Curio Core lets you import Lists and Mind Maps directly fromCSV and OPML files. From a palette on the right side of the screen, you can change anyof these items colors, fonts, shapes, outlines, drop shadows, andmore. Metadata lets you tag elements so they re easy to find insubsequent searches; add check boxes and progress icons to helptrack how much you ve gotten done; and append icons to highlightcertain pieces of information. Change the font, color, or text sizewithin one branch of a Mind Map or list, and all subsequentelements on that level look the same. In addition, Curio Core offers basic vector graphics tools. You canresize and rotate any element, and draw various different shapes,along with multisegmented lines that switch dynamically from curvesto straight sections as you specify. Curio Core supports dragging and dropping images, PDFs, QuickTimemovies, and other files into Idea Spaces. More impressively, youcan also insert live previews of Adobe Creative Suite, Apple iWork,and Microsoft Office files. Clicking on each preview will open therespective file within its native program, and any changes you makethere will show up again in Curio Core when you save and close. Youcan even add interactive Web page views and Google Docs windowswithin Idea Spaces, via a Safari-like interface. Makeover: Style galleries let you set an element s look with a fewsimple clicks. Want to share your thoughts with others? Curio Core exports to Webpages, images, PDFs, and even iPhoto albums. There s no iCloudintegration yet, but Curio Core will publish straight to Mobile Me. Feeling lost? Curio Core has clear and comprehensive help files. Afriendly Getting Started guide walks you through the program seasy interface, demonstrating how Curio Core can help you writeterm papers, create interactive workbooks for schoolkids, trackresearch and business projects, and even plan home remodeling. However, Curio Core s status as the entry-level version of anincreasingly sophisticated spectrum of programs also works againstit. Core s limited features pack plenty of power, but Curio smakers decided to write one user manual for three differentprograms with varying tiers of features. In some cases, they rekind enough to label which programs offer which abilities. Inothers, you re left guessing, and usually disappointed. If theimpressive-looking bells and whistles in Curio s Standard and Proversions tempt you, you ll find options to upgrade from Core inthe online store at Zengobi s Web site. Once I d gotten the hang of the program, it took me only a fewminutes to pull together Web pages, PDFs, to-do lists, andcharacter charts as a notebook for a novel-in-progress. However, Iencountered a few quirks along the way. On a 13-inch laptop, theavailable screen real estate just isn t enough to see the wholeIdea Space. A hotkey that toggles the surrounding palettes on andoff helps, but switching back and forth gets old fast. And whileCurio Core s manual and Getting Started guide tout multitouchgesture support for resizing or rotating objects, they don tmention that you ll have to first hunt for and enable this featureamid a sea of other checkboxes in the program s preferences. I also had a little trouble with video. When I first dropped asmall QuickTime movie into an Idea Space, it wouldn t play at all.The second time, the entire program froze. The third time provedthe charm, as did all subsequent attempts to work with that andother videos. Customize: You can easily customize nearly every aspect of Curio svarious elements. Macworld s buying advice At nearly $40, Curio Core is one of the more expensive organizeroptions in the Mac App Store. But it s not the priciest; it offersa lot more features than many cheaper apps; and it presents them ina friendly, easy-to-learn package. If you want to get the best ofyour next massive project, consider Curio Core a great place tostart. [ Nathan Alderman is a writer, editor, and occasional scatterbrain inAlexandria, Va. ]. I am an expert from plastics-injectionmolding.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Two Shot Mold Manufacturer , CNC Machined Parts, High Temperature Molding,and more.
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