Kinopio

Seriously cool app

I’m a “Personal–Knowledge Manager” (PKM) obsessive. I have played with a great number of the tools in this space, bought more than one, and use more than one. It’s impressive that I can say, of them, Kinopio is one of the best tools I’ve discovered. I truly like the mind–mapping organizational structure; its similarity to a graph network or even an “evidence board,” for lack of better comparisons to provide, feels natural and logical, especially if you’re an avid user of digital platforms and like to curate. The creative, imaginal approach to your stray ideas and notes is a truly sublime change of pace. The app is also feature–rich, but intuitive, without the bottomless learning curve or enigmatic density common to its peers in this space. If you read the developer’s blog, you will learn that this is a deliberate approach, and that’s certainly praiseworthy. I developed muscle memory for Kinopio with a measure of ease. This is rare, in my experience, among PKMs and even other commonplacing or mind–mapping tools more similar to Kinopio. The use of icons (and thus the lack of identifiable names) for most features was a challenge to internalize for me, as I have mild cognitive issues, but not so much as to truly compromise my experience. However, I continue to find the color–coding, inbox and text boxes to be somewhat formidable; this is trivial enough, and this may owe to the shorted circuitry of this brain again. Performance is also somewhat of an issue, but once again, never so much as to diminish my experience. (And I expect this of new apps, especially in this space.) Unfortunately, one day, the app’s performance slowed to a glacial crawl just after I tagged one of my notes, and I encountered data loss after I was forced to terminate the app. I lost more than half of the 15 notes in my “Space,” despite how I wrote most of them more than 30 minutes before. I reproduced the issue in another Space, and struggled with the same data loss again, only the app became even slower, enough this time to also affect overall performance until I terminated the app again. I use the iPad Mini 6, with iOS current as of writing. I’m not really sure what occurred (perhaps I entered too much text?); I know software is a volatile thing. But I certainly regret that I can no longer use this with any level of professional gravity. Once my most thoughtful ideas and concepts are lost, this brain often ensures that they are gone forever; that’s a risk I can’t take. But I can tell you that I really wanted to include Kinopio among my daily suite of tools, to be used for more than simply my most insignificant creative glimmers, stray links and all manner of colorful idiocies I wouldn’t be galled to lose. I hope that I can include this app among them one day. I have grown enraptured by the concept, and even despite my data–loss episode, I would like to witness and partake in its growth. I believe you should give Kinopio a try. I found this little blue blob by serendipity and curiosity, and even despite all of this, I’m glad that I did. We certainly need more platforms like this. —K. J.