I don’t usually write up software reviews on here, however one of my favorite software companies just released a new product for all you mac fans. Zengobi has released Curio 5, a major upgrade of their brainstorming and project management application for Mac OS X 10.5. Curio 5 features include the new Status shelf for tracking your to-do items across projects, iCal synchronization of events and to-do items, idea space templates, collapsible mind map and list hierarchies, an Inspector bar, figure styles, WebView figures, color-coded date adornments, beefed up Scrapbook shelf, improved search feature, and cross-project linking, multi-touch support. Curio is available in two editions: Standard (US$99) and Professional (US$149, US$69 academia).

Curio is the premier brainstorming and project management application designed to promote visual thinking. Using Curio’s innovative freeform interface and tools, you can intuitively gather, associate, and recall your ideas, while easily managing all the notes and documents associated with your project.

Pricing and Availability

Curio 5 is available immediately for download from www.zengobi.com/curio. Upgrade pricing for existing customers is available. Curio is available in Standard and Professional editions. Academic and volume discounts are available. Users can download and use either Curio edition as a full-featured trial for 15 days. A 60-day extended trial is also available upon request. Full system requirements and more information on Curio can be found at www.zengobi.com/curio.

AirMe, a free mobile photo sharing application that premiered last month alongside the opening of Apple’s App Store, now enables all iPhone users to instantly send their photos live to Facebook. All photos are auto-tagged with location, time, weather and any user customized information. AirMe also now provides an easy auto-post to Twitter, with optional location tagging.

“With this new release, iPhone users can now choose to have their photos instantly captured, tagged and sent to their Facebook page, where all their friends can see what is happening at that very moment,” said Mark Haverkate, AirMe CEO. “AirMe is all about making mobile photography fun, easy and live. What better way than with Facebook?”

In its first month, AirMe has already been used in over 90 countries, and is launching this week across India alongside their official introduction of the iPhone. Upcoming AirMe releases will include photo and video versions for Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones, and auto-links to Picasa, PhotoBucket and several other social media sites.

popIn announces the PC, Mac and iPhone editions of “popIn” beta, a browser tool that enables users to access other sites and incorporate related information into the web page they are viewing.

popIn is a “customized annotating service” that gives you the kind of information you want, about the word you need to know, when you need to know it. Detailed information about the search term is temporarily embedded right in the web page you are reading, so when you finish reading the explanation, your eyes are exactly at the point where you should resume reading the original document, saving you the trouble of having to finding your place again.

Features
popIn is a patent-pending browser tool that allows users to select a word and find and integrate related information about that word from other websites. Moreover, it is browser- and device-independent, and is especially powerful when used on small screen mobile devices such as the iPhone.

With this announcement, popIn has released a total of two versions — popIn on PC & Mac for personal computers, and popIn for the iPhone. Moreover, we now provide six services with especially high user demand: a text search service, an image search service, a video search service, a book search service, a wikipedia service, and a map service.

What makes “popIn on iPhone” especially powerful is the addition of the “popSelect” application, developed in-house at popIn Inc. popSelect allows users to select text on the iPhone’s browser, enabling users to look up words they are interested with ease of use approaching the PC & Mac version of popIn.

On the iPhone, whose browser lets you browse the Web with the ease of a PC&Mac browser, “popIn on iPhone” now lets you search for the details of the words you’re interested in with ease that approaches that of “popIn on PC & Mac”.

EdgeCast Networks, the rich media content delivery network (CDN), and AnimeNewsNetwork.com, the world’s leading Japanese animation content website, publicly unveiled a new Anime video streaming service. The content is being delivered around the world exclusively via the EdgeCast content delivery network. The service will be ad supported and free for viewers.

AnimeNewsNetwork.com delivers 2.3 million unique visitors with over 19 million page views per month. Internet metrics firm Alexa puts AnimeNewsNetwork.com consistently in its top 1,500 websites worldwide.

EdgeCast Networks, utilizing their worldwide content delivery network, will power the streaming video services. The service will be among the first to leverage the new Adobe Flash Media Server 3 [FMS] platform to securely deliver near broadcast-quality h.264 video to end users on Windows, Mac and Linux environments. EdgeCast has implemented FMS security features such as RTMPe delivery, SWF verification, and token authentication throughout its global content delivery network, making this service possible while minimizing security risks such as piracy and stream ripping.

“I couldn’t be happier with the level of service we’ve received from EdgeCast Networks,” said Justin Sevakis, AnimeNewsNetwork.com director of new media. “This service would not be possible if it weren’t for the reliable delivery and support for the newest technologies that EdgeCast provides.”

The English speaking Japanese animation (“anime”) market has struggled in recent years despite a robust and growing audience, a fact largely attributed to Internet piracy. An estimated 69% of Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 watch anime regularly, according to a 2007 poll. AnimeNewsNetwork.com’s video player provides anime fans the speed and ease of Internet delivery, while giving content owners the security and quality they require.

“Many of our prospects and customers have legitimate concerns about streaming license-protected media globally, due to perceived risks about piracy or other types of misuse,” said James Segil, co-founder and president of EdgeCast Networks. “But our robust security features give content owners and distributors full control over who sees what and when, eliminating the chances of licensing violations that threaten the integrity of the service. We’re very excited to enable companies like ANN to stream licensed content with the peace of mind that everyone’s rights are protected.”

Initially the service will include nearly three hundred trailers for various anime programs, as well as editorial video produced by AnimeNewsNetwork.com such as interviews, reviews and virtual tours of the anime industry’s leading production studios.