If Evernote and Keynote and NovaMind all got together and had a baby (never mind the mechanics, OK?), the offspring might look a little like Zengobi's Curio. A virtual whiteboard with presentation capacities, Curio has the organizational chops of Evernote, mind-mapping capabilities comparable to the best apps, and the ability to run slideshows with transitions, though with a limited palette. 

Taken together, Curio is one fast-loading, responsive package with fantastic potential and tons of flexibility. If there's a downside, it's Curio's price: $100 for new users, and $50 for upgraders.

But what you do get for your money is bang, and a lot of it. For starters, Curio sports a Getting Started tutorial that explains how all the controls function. Pop-over toolbars will look familiar to anyone who’s used any of the iWork apps on iOS.

Upon opening Curio, you'll see two unevenly sized panes. You navigate your projects in the left pane, and manage their content in the larger right pane. An array of 30 buttons lines the top and bottom of the app. These icons are easy to understand — the magnifying glass brings up a search bar, the bookmark lets you flag a space in your project, the tag gives you metadata capabilities, and so on. 

The left hand side is the Organizer for your projects, and it allows for slides as well as folders and subfolders. Click the Section button up top, and you can code parts of your projects based on priority levels while you're working on them or as you discover you need more information about a piece of your project.

Clicking the briefcase-shaped Project button in the lower-left brings up a gallery of all your projects, and it’s also where you can start a new one. The + button lets you add a variety of pieces to your project. "Blank Idea Space" is the name given to Curio's blank slides, though the app also includes styled versions with different shades and textures, plus templates for things like how-tos, creative briefs, class notes, meeting plans, and more. 

Once you have a project slide open, six grouped buttons under the right pane let you add text boxes, lines, free form drawing, and so on. Clicking on these tools opens a pop-up window with options (colors, fonts, and the like). Click the Insert button to drop in shapes, lists, mind maps, tables, notecards, YouTube or Vimeo videos, screenshots, documents, Google Docs apps, and just about anything else you can think of. You can even record audio and video.

Making slides and filling them with content is a snap, and it wasn't long before we were putting together really complex slides without any trouble. Inserting and moving content wasn't difficult, tagging projects and slides was simplicity itself, and Curio makes it easy to export your project in a variety of formats (PDF, RTF, HTML, text, even exporting each slide as image files to iPhoto).

The bottom line. Everything about Curio was a piece of cake, and the software was pretty much fully comprehensible in less than 10 minutes. If there's any weaknesses, it's in not being able to export to a presentation software format. Sure, you can import a PowerPoint into your project, just not the other way around. We'd also be thrilled to see an iPad version with iCloud sharing someday soon.

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Curio 8 Screenshots

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  This screen, provided by Zengobi, shows how Curio might be used by a student to organize notes, lab work, tasks, and papers. (The rest of the screens in this gallery were taken by our reviewer.)

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  Need to drop in a YouTube video? That's just a couple of clicks away.

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  Clicking the + sign to insert a new slide shows a selection of the many templates available.

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  Each slide can contain a huge variety of content, from lists to Mind Maps to audio and video recordings you make right in the app.

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  Once you create a Mind Map (ours is just blank right now), you can right-click it for a contextual menu of options, and even save your preferred Mind Map Style to use again later.

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  Curio's integrated task management features let you label and filter tasks by due date and other criteria.

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  Curio really looks like a Mac app, from the iWork-like project gallery all the way through the rest of the interface.

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  Toolbars pop up when you need them, reminiscent of Apple's iWork apps for iOS.

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  Let your ideas take shape...literally.

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