When I first saw the announcements that Bento was to be released, I was very excited about the potential of it, and was anxiously awaiting the chance to review it. Bento, which is developed by FileMaker, is a personal database application for Mac OS X Leopard. FileMaker is a phenomenal application in itself, but for many people FileMaker is just overkill, especially when it comes to more personal needs. What I needed is an application that will help me organize my contacts, events, projects, inventory, etc., and Bento is all about organization.

The first thing I noticed about Bento is the clean and well designed layout. It’s not cluttered, and offers basically everything you need to get started in a very usable manner. Looking through the source category, I immediately noticed the integration between Bento and Address Book and iCal. All of your iCal events and tasks, along with your contents of the Address Book are easily manageable inside Bento. Any changes you to make to these entries in Bento, will reflect in your Address Book and iCal.

Bento ships with quite a few templates sorted by education, personal, and work. These templates cover a wide range of needs including projects, events, planning, inventory, and more. You also have the option to start with a blank template, and build your own solution from scratch. The pre-made templates are completely customizable, so you can tailor them to your specific needs with ease.

Over the last couple of weeks I have created several different project types, but I wanted to focus on the one that Bento seemed most valuable to me, and that was the ability to create a complete inventory of my home. I started out using the Inventory template, and with about 20 minutes or so of customizing the layout and input fields, it was exactly what I needed. Once you are working inside a form, clicking the customize icon will let you easily modify the current template to your liking both visually and functionality wise. Arranging the layout is as simple as drag and drop, and adding fields like text, currency, media, etc. are setup by entering just a few choices.

I set my inventory form up to have two columns which one contained fields for item description, price, date purchased, serial numbers, and other relevant info. The second column was dedicated to media and notes. The media field allows you to add items like images, audio, video, and even gives the option to take your own pictures and import them directly to your form entry. Since my focus was inventory, I took pictures of my household items, and simply dragged them into the field. I had no problems importing media, but I would love to see an integration with Flickr where I could pull images from there right into a field.

The real difficult part was just adding all the data, but that is one thing that unfortunately Bento can’t do by itself. After a few short hours I had all my inventory data entered, and was very pleased with the final result. The table view inside Bento gives you a quick spreadsheet-like view of your data, which also gives you easy access to sort your data. There is also a summary view that will show your column stats depending on what type of data is entered into that area. For instance, in my “cost” category it can show me the total sum, average, minimum, or maximum data for that column. Don’t worry if you have a bunch of entries either, the iTunes-like search is quick and accurate.

Now I’m at the point where all of my data is entered, I have a good template setup that will make adding additional items easy, so just one more thing to do which is customizing my library. Clicking the customize icon once again, I browse through the over 20 included themes which give you different backgrounds, colors, and text. The included themes are good, but I would like to have the ability to add my own themes as well.

The last feature I wanted to try, and is probably the most important is the backup ability. After all, what’s the point of entering all your data if there is no way to save it to a safe place. To backup your database, or to restore a previously saved one, just select the option from the file menu and save or open the database. It can’t get much simpler than that. I took my backup and placed it on a secure thumb drive for safe keeping. A feature I would like to see here is the ability to password protect the backup directly from Bento.

As I said in the beginning, I was excited about the potential of Bento, and after using it for several weeks, Bento delivers on its mission to offer a powerful, yet simple, database solution for the rest of us. If you need a database solution for your home, or even small business, and don’t need the full power of something like FileMaker Pro, then Bento is the answer.

Bento easily earns a 5 star rating.

Link: Bento ($49, 30 day trial)

For the past year or so I have been using the older style wireless keyboard from Apple.  I have been quite pleased with it, but after a year of daily use it seemed it was time to replace this.  Since this keyboard is used with my Mac Mini, I headed out to our local Best Buy and picked up one of the new wireless keyboards.  Looking in the aisle you really wouldn’t imagine a keyboard was in a box this this small, but hey, small is what this keyboard is. 

I was a bit hesitant getting the wireless version because I often use the numeric pad and the wireless version doesn’t have that, but the wired version does.  However, I like my desktop to be as clutter-free as possible, so wireless it is!  As usual, Apple keeps it’s packaging to a minimum with the contents just being the keyboard itself, instructions, and a pack of batteries.  The first thing you notice is how thin and light this keyboard is.  Comparing this to my previous Apple keyboard was one of the first things I did, and as you can see in the images below there is quite a difference in size.

The keyboard itself looks like it was pulled right off a MacBook, and feels the same way as well.  It was a bit awkward at first using this keyboard, as my hands seem to cover the entire board, but after a few hours of us that was all behind me.  The keys are smooth and very easy to type with.  One of the things I especially like is the fact that this keyboard is quiet.  Even during a heavy typing session, nobody else in the room would have known I was typing.  Using this with Leopard, the only other thing I had to get used to is the keys for items like activating the Dashboard are now mapped in different locations, but they are clearly marked so it really wasn’t that big of a deal. 

Overall I am very happy with this keyboard.  There really isn’t anything I can complain about other than the lack of a numeric pad.  If you are looking for a compact and light keyboard with Bluetooth capability, then I can highly recommend this product.

Link: Apple Wireless Keyboard