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Bento is one of those applications that's an enigma -- it's mysterious, puzzling and yet astoundingly simple at the same time. It's a personal database for regular people, not the kind of database used for big business. As you might expect from any Apple-related product, it's easy to use.
Bento is made by FileMaker, which is a subsidiary of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). It's the company that makes the business-class FileMaker Pro database. Bento is designed to help you organize a variety of non-structured data, including contacts, calendar events, projects, tasks, photos and media -- just about anything you can think of. Entering data is easy and intuitive, but the trick isn't so much understanding how to drag-and-drop your content, how to import data and make hyperlinks. The key to unlocking the enigma of Bento is figuring out how you can make it work for you -- personally.
What It Does
Bento only works with Mac OS X 10.5, a.k.a. Leopard, so if you're on Tiger, you're out of luck. Bento is able to integrate and keep track of all your disparate data, and it uses built-in Leopard features to to do it -- hence the Leopard limitation.
When you first launch Bento, it starts by importing your Mac Address Book and iCal data. After that's been imported, the synchronization goes both ways: If you make a change in Address Book or iCal, the change will appear in your Bento databases; if you make a change in Bento, it'll appear in Address Book or iCal. As you might guess, this is important for all the iPhone users out there who sync their iPhones with Address Book and iCal.
So in one sense, Bento can give users a more flexible and extensible contacts and calendaring solution, all in one location, with contacts and events that can be associated with other data -- like projects, teams, customers, cars or cats. Because it's a database, it'll let you sort and view your information like never before -- say, customers who have cars but not cats.
Bento comes with 20 pre-designed templates that share Apple's elegant affinity for design, and while they make a database look pretty cool, they're not as slick the latest applications that are coming directly out of Apple. Still, these templates help you decide what to do with Bento.
Projects and More
The pre-built templates include projects, contacts, to do items, events, files, inventory, event planning, time billing, home inventory, expenses, an exercise log, a membership list, customers, classes, a student list and more. Basically, if you have more than six things that are naturally grouped together, it might make sense to use Bento to keep track of them.
Take, for example, a home inventory. If you want to catalog all the important things you have in your home for insurance purposes, Bento works great. You have data entry points for the item name, a description, a category, condition, location, serial number, purchase date, original cost, and so on. There's even a field for a photo where you can drag and drop a photo of the item. But what if you've got some borrowed items? Easy. Simply create a new category for borrowed items. It's freakishly intuitive, even though it's a database.
Going to the Library
Most every Leopard user is familiar with the concept of a Library in OS X and Apple applications. iPhoto is basically a database, but it uses the metaphor of a library to show you how your photos are grouped and displayed -- in events or slideshows, for example. The same goes for your music, videos and podcasts in iTunes.
While iPhoto and iTunes are split into two basic columns, the main Bento interface is split into three columns. On the left is a Source list that shows you databases. Address Book and iCal Events are there by default, and it's easy to add new ones like Projects, To Do Items -- basically any of the prebuilt templates noted above, or anything you can imagine putting into a group. These are broken into what Bento calls "libraries," and their subsets of data are called "collections." For example, Address Book would be a library and a group of your friends would be a collection.
The large middle column shows you the individual item data in the Form view, while the Table view lists your data items. In the Form view, this is where you would enter data, drag and drop content, or customize the look and feel of your database. On the right, Bento provides a list of relevant fields that you can add to each library or collection. In the example of an Address Book, your fields might include home phone, work phone, e-mail 
address, photo, birthday, and if you want to customize the fields, the number and types of cats your contact might own.
Spreadsheet Replacement
A lot of consumers use spreadsheets -- Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Excel or Apple's Numbers -- to handle data that would be better suited to databases, and to help these people move to Bento, FileMaker lets you import you data as long as its in a Comma Separated Values format. It's a handy feature, of course, but if you've got a complicated spreadsheet, expect to spend some time massaging everything into order.
Because Bento is a new kind of application for most consumers, potential customers should consider downloading the free trial version from FileMaker's Web site -- although, at US$49 for a single user, Bento is reasonably priced. While Bento is designed for a single user, FileMaker offers a family pack for $99. It's available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese.
The hardware requirements are minimal, actually, and the most important thing you need to remember is Leopard -- if your Mac can run Leopard well, you'll get decent Bento performance.
The Recommendation
Overall, Bento is an astounding little database application. Frankly, I was surprised at how easy and intuitive it was to use, to manipulate and customize. In some ways, though, Bento is a solution looking for a problem: It's only going to be compelling to users who have to, or want to, manage something more complicated than their calendar and contacts.
Want to build a recipe book or database? Bento would be a fantastic solution. Need to keep track of the little league baseball team that you coach? Bento will keep track of practices, games, players, parents, and more -- and it'll do it in a fun, intuitive and handy way.
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