Bento

Those of you who already use Filemaker or pay attention to MacRumors probably already know about this, but this is the latest database they came up for Leopard only:

http://www.filemaker.com/products/b...A2C&WT.mc_id=D0C70F033B0041D39E0C1FA48B67DA2C

named Bento...

if nothing else, the name caught my interest (and made me hungry)

in any case, i briefly tried it, and as advertised, this is definitely geared more towards a "personal" database. In other words, the default templates allow you to create address books, calendar tasks, accounts, media libraries, file organizers, etc. etc.

It is also much cheaper than filemaker and without such a steep learning curve, so for those of you who keep databases purely for noncommercial uses, this might be a good alternative . It has a much more user-friendly and intuitive interface than most databases and isn't anywhere nearly as technical. I do like how well it integrates with OSX - although keep in mind that it'll *only* integrate with OSX - which means quicktime, itunes, and whatnot for your media content previews.

I'm also fairly certain it'll integrate well with your standard OSX office apps for mail merge and whatnot - although not having Office 2008, I can't say for certain. Still, I can't see why it wouldn't.

Free preview that lasts for about 3 months. Definitely worth trying out.

 

Thanks, taelrak. I've been looking for an application like this. I've never used Filemaker, but I have been using a trial version of Librarian Pro, and have not been too impressed with it thus far. Bento looks much more promising.

 

Haha Bento. =] Isn't that a Japanese lunch box or something... I wonder how they got the name.

 

lol yep!

If I were to venture a guess, I'd say you could make some sort of inference about the structured hierarchical organization of a bento which can also be multi-layered and stacked and whatnot and analogize that to a database?

But that's just a guess trying to fit and justify the name after it's already there. No clue why they picked it in the first place over anything else.

 

Hehe, I read the title of this thread and got hungry thinking about Japanese food .