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.
Just a reminder that there is just two days left in the MacUpdate Promo, and Parallels 3.0 has already been unlocked. 10 Mac applications are going for just $64.99, with an estimated value of over $400.
If you have been following my blog or twitter posts, you might have noticed my search for the best blogging application for the Mac. Out of the many recommendations I received, two applications were always mentioned…..MarsEdit 2 and ecto 3 (beta). So over the last couple of weeks I have downloaded and tried both applications, and today I will give my review of both and hopefully come to some decision on which one I will use on a regular basis.
User Interface
The main user interface of both apps are very similar in appearance, and both are fairly simple and not cluttered in any way. Each has a sidebar which allows you to add/edit/delete your blog accounts. Both applications also support a wide range of blogging platforms including WordPress and TypePad. MarsEdit lets you add the site url/name, and then MarsEdit will try to automatically detect your weblog settings. If for some reason you need to do it manually, that option is also available. Ecto also lets you enter your blog information in much of the same way, but ecto also has an “assistant” which can guide you through the process, which can be very helpful for new users.
The main view shows your posts associated with the chosen blog (if you have multiple blogs), and by clicking a title you can see the post in the preview pane. Double-clicking the posts will retrieve them and open them inside the editor window. Each also has a variety of options which you can edit, delete, modify, create new posts, and save drafts. If you don’t like, or just want to change the default toolbar layout, you can easily customize the toolbar to your liking.
As far as the main interface is concerned, both MarsEdit and ecto have similar design and function, and were very easy to start using.
Editor
The Editor is where we start to see some real differences between the two apps. Once again, both have a similar layout, but ecto has quite a few more options. The most notable being that ecto has a more rich text editor (and an HTML editor) as opposed to the Editor in MarsEdit, which is based in HTML text markup. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but new users and people who are not familiar or comfortable with html markups, might find ecto easier to use as it’s more WYSIWYG.
As I said, the text markup in MarsEdit is not really a problem, and in while writing several posts with it I found no problem formatting my posts. MarsEdit has a drop-down menu in the upper right hand corner which gives quick access to common markups such as bold, links, block quote, etc. They also make it easy to add your own markup macros which comes in very handy.
The basic editing functions in both are very easy to use, but for new users, ecto might be a slightly better choice, but anyone who is comfortable or willing to take on some text markup, MarsEdit will satisfy.
More “Advanced” Editing
Blogging today is much more than just simple text formatting, right? Media, whether it happens to be images, video, etc., is now common in blogging. You can add items like images by simple drag and drop, or through the Media Manager in MarsEdit, and the “Import Media” button in ecto. Another advantage ecto has is the ability to preview audio and video before inserting into a post.
Nothing particularly groundbreaking here, but my main interest was with how each integrated using images from Flickr. In the MarsEdit Media Manager, Flickr has it’s own section where it will show your Flickr account images and even let you search through them. The images are displayed as rows of thumbnails for easy viewing, and give you the options of selecting the size and alignment of the image to insert.
Ecto has the Flickr Helper option which is similar in function to MarsEdit, but has way more options. It will let you filter your images by sets, and even let you “fetch” images from your contacts, groups, and tags. Another cool feature ecto has is the “Amazon Helper”. This opens a dialog where you can search the various sections on Amazon, and select a product to insert with your choice of displaying images and text. I didn’t have much of a use for it, but very neat nonetheless.
As far as more “advanced” editing goes, this was also a tough call to make. Between the two, ecto has quite a few more options than MarsEdit, but some of them might not be needed for everyone, and MarsEdit has all the editing options most bloggers would need.
Conclusion
I think it’s safe to say that trying to decide which of these applications was “the best” is quite difficult. They are both top notch in what they do, and I would not hesitate recommending either of them to anyone looking for a blogging solution for the Mac. After using both I think it all comes down to the matter of personal preference, and for my use, I would probably pick MarsEdit over ecto simply because it’s a bit more simple in design.
However, I haven’t made my final decision on which one I am going to use. I still have a few days left in the trial versions, but I’m not sure if I can even make a decision by then. The bottom line is both these applications are great, but newer users might be more taken with ecto, and users who like HTML markups should go with MarsEdit. I really recommend downloading the trial versions for each, and see which one works better for you. I don’t think you will be disappointed with either of them.
The latest application bundle from MacUpdate is now up. They have 10 apps, some of which are locked, for $65. Total price of all the applications would normally be $475.
Some of the apps included are:
Parallels (unlocked when a certain amount of bundles are sold)
BannerZest
Art Text
Hazel
Typinator
MenuCalendarClock
and more
The promo starts today and will run for two weeks ending on April 29th.
Giveawayoftheday.com has a fantastic piece of software up for grabs today. Evernote (beta), which is an application that allows you to take notes, web clipping, images, etc. and keep them in order. This new version (still in beta) also allows you to synchronize your notes with other computers that you have Evernote installed on.
There is a Mac and Windows Mobile version that is currently in private beta, but you can get access to that as well. I found this via Lifehacker and they say the current beta will allow you to update to other betas and the final application when released.
Features of Evernote:
Access notes across multiple platforms: Windows, Mac (OS X 10.5), Web, Windows Mobile, Mobile Web Browser;
Full synchronization across all platforms;
Powerful image recognition and search for printed and handwritten text in images;
Email and MMS snapshots and text from your mobile phone to your personalized Evernote email address;
Windows and Mac clients allow local-only notebooks, which will not synchronize with the Evernote Service.
Remember, this is good for today only, so there is only a few hours left.
I recently wrote about the Election Countdown gadgets I made for Windows users, so today I wanted to share the dashboard widget that Mac OS X users can use. Just as it’s Windows counterparts, this widget will count down the days until the 2008 Presidential Election.
Well this was the application that finally brought me to buying the MacHeist bundle this year. VectorDesigner is a new vector art application that is usually $69, so this was definitely a fantastic addition to the bundle. I was actually trying out the demo before I stumbled upon MacHeist and was seriously thinking about purchasing it.
There’s just about 2 days left in for the sale, so there is still time to get in. Aside from VectorDesigner, there are plenty of other great apps like Pixelator, CSSEdit, Coversutra, and more.
I finally picked up Leopard about a week or so ago, and so far things have been going quite well with it. I’m still slowly going through the new features, and getting some applications setup, but for the most part I have been happy with it. One of the applications I was thinking of purchasing was Pixelmator, which is a new image editor for OS X. I currently use Photoshop Elements 4, but I never have really liked the Mac version, and the recently announced PSE 6 just doesn’t seem worth the upgrade.
While reading Macrumors I noticed that this years MacHeist bundle is going on, and there is just a few days left before it ends. To sum it up quickly, MacHeist has a bundle of great Mac applications for one low price and a portion of the proceeds goes to various charities that you can choose. Also, they have “missions” you can complete which rewards you with free software and discounts.
Last year they had some great applications including one of my personal favorites, Rapidweaver. This year the bundle wasn’t the greatest, but a few key programs make the bundle a great deal. First off is Pixelator, which is $59 by itself, and CSSEdit which is $29. The MacHeist bundle which includes both of these plus about 10 other applications is only $49, so it’s definitely a great deal.
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