http://www.43folders.com/2004/12/devonthink_inte.html#comments

DevonThink is a beautifully executed program, but I've just exported everything in my copy of DT back into the Finder in order to work like David Balluff. This is nothing to do with DT, but with a change of philosophy.

A few weeks ago, I had an epiphany about data collection - the sort of rampant data collection that DT is so suited to. Packratting data gives you the sense that you are tucking away something that MIGHT be of value, so that you file away whole documents, whole websites, when you only wanted a single line. Just in case. The result is megabytes of useless Stuff. But I've realised - I'm slow on these things - that it would take me a good deal of the rest of my life to really digest those megabytes of data I've stashed away, and that I actually want very little of it. It was handy and free at the time, but now it's just another distraction that I don't need if I'm going to have a mind like water. Little of the quickly sampled, quickly discarded digital knowledge I've gathered has ever played a significant role in my life. I've just gathered it because it's there.

So I'm henceforth taking a different approach. For digital notes and ransacking the web for snippets of information, I'm using Hog Bay Notebook. It's simpler, faster, more flexible and quicker to navigate than DT, and the columns in HBN 3.5 (now in beta) are invaluable. (It's also written by a GTD fan who is designing it for that purpose. I use a paper planner, but HBN would do a good job of GTD.)

For the limited amount of material that I want to collect and hang onto, I've just begun using Zengobi Curio. The usual response from those who try this remarkable program is "watduzzitdo?". I asked the same question over several months of trying and abandoning it. But now I've got it.

I'm a journalist. When I travel on an assignment, I return with written notes, audio interviews and digital snaps. In times past, when there were no digital options, I might have cleared a desk or a floor and strewed index cards and snapshots around to find the story. Pretty soon the lot would be covered in an advancing scum of paper and coffee cups, and my daughter would have sneaked off various vital items. With Curio, I can stick the lot in unlimited virtual desks or floors, arranged and designed to my taste (and according to the amount of time I want to put in). To my own assignment collection I can quickly add images and text from the web, emails, hyperlinks - in fact, anything at all (check it out, David Balluff, because it sounds like what you're after).

The program is actually billed as an idea generator. I build up synopses and create story pitches in it, but I think selling Curio as a glorified whiteboard is selling it dramatically short. I want to use it as my permanent repository for everything that is worthwhile, just as a stack of hard-copy journals once may have done.

The fact is that adding data to Curio is not as quick as in DT. A little thought and organisation is required. It still takes only seconds (drag and drop is the usual method), but because it's not just a hot-key press I find myself being more specific about what I include in a Curio file. Best of all, in my view, is that I'm left with a highly visual digital journal of a job. Instead of an amorphous folder of stuff, I've got a job journal that retains my thought processes and displays, to some degree, some evidence of thought and craftsmanship. I also find that because it's visual, I remember information in its Curio idea space context as you remember the layout of a mind map.

For all these reasons, I'm starting to use Curio as my database of choice. Comparatively little goes into each file, compared to my once-bulging DT folders, but what goes in will be carefully considered for its worth. So when I collect bits and pieces on interests like tai chi, or organic agriculture, or black and white reportage photography, it will slowly build into a series of highly personal digital "books" and not be lost in some folder that is only ever accessed in bits via a search.

A big gripe against Curio is that it's expensive at US$129. That's the cost of a good fountain pen or a cheap scanner, and half the price of the power saw I bought the other day. All are useful tools. Price is relative to usefulness and quality, not to the cost of other shareware as some Curio critics seem to think.

Curio has defiencies. Only some usage quirks: speed and stability can't be faulted. But at v2.0, it's so well crafted that I'm confident that those deficiencies won't remain long.

I'm not associated with Curio in any way whatsoever. I'm just rapt at finding a new way to deal with digital information that suits the way I want to live in the world. And for me, that means limiting the avalanche of information that we have inflicted on ourselves in order to do more living.

Matt.