FileMaker previews ‘Bento’ personal database for Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard

Today FileMaker, Inc. began a public preview of Bento, a new personal database designed specifically for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Bento is designed to help Mac users organize their lives by giving them one place to put their important information, from contacts and calendars to projects and events. Bento can organize activities related to work, home, school and community.

Bento automatically displays contacts and calendars kept within Address Book and iCal. There is no need to re-enter existing names, phone numbers, email addresses and upcoming events into Bento so users can start organizing and extending to their information right away.

“Bento is the personal database for the millions of Mac users who appreciate the elegance and ease of use of their Mac,” said FileMaker president Dominique Goupil in the press rleease. “With Bento, we are providing an incredibly easy way to manage all your information — iCal calendar events, Address Book contacts, digital media and files — all in one place, effortlessly.”

Bento users can organize contacts, calendars, photos and files so they can easily do the following and more:
• Manage a vast amount of contact details
• Coordinate events, parties and fundraisers
• Track projects, assignments and deadlines
• Connect related information together
• Prioritize tasks
• Catalog inventory, donations and items for sale
• Record hours worked and payments due
• Assign ratings to service providers and sellers
• Create libraries for music, movies and other media
• Store files and photos in relation to projects and events

Key features include:
• Built-in links to Address Book and iCal. Be productive instantly by integrating and adding to your contact and calendar information. Add photos to your contacts, add invitees to an iCal event, and more. And because Bento links with Address Book and iCal, you can see data on your iPhone or share it over the Web with .Mac.
• Stylish templates and themes. More than 20 ready-to-use templates sport elegant themes to reflect each user’s unique style, personality or activity. Forms and fields are designed with coordinated colors, layouts, fonts and text styles for immediate use.
• Works with iPhone and .Mac. Bento links to live Address Book and iCal data. No synchronization is necessary to be in sync with Bento, since Apple’s core technology takes the information to iPhone and .Mac for sharing over the Web.
• iTunes-like search. Searching, organizing and sorting records is simple. Create collections to store work, personal or volunteer tasks in the same way you would create smart playlists in iTunes or albums in iPhoto.
• Drag, drop and import with ease . Rearranging, regrouping and viewing lists or forms are drag-and-drop easy, as is importing or exporting data from Microsoft Excel, Numbers or any other program that creates CSV files.
• See things your way . One-click customization options for themes, columns displayed, label positions, text sizes, shading, and alignment; the Table View allows for easy sorting and quick stats in Summary Row; Add more pages to view different slices of information.
• Get the Leopard experience. Users will love many of the exciting new Leopard capabilities in Bento, including: Media Manager, which allows users to store and change images in Bento fields; live connection to iCal, which exchanges data between calendars and tasks; Advanced Find, which re-uses the “Advanced Find” module from Leopard’s Finder for pinpointing specific information within the database; and Time Machine, the new Leopard feature that allows for easy database back-ups.

Bento is designed to run exclusively on Mac OS X v.10.5 Leopard. FileMaker intends to ship Bento in January, 2008. The Bento public preview is time-limited beta software meant for evaluation purposes only. Please read the software license accompanying the preview software for full terms and conditions.

More info and download link here.

FileMaker, Inc. develops award-winning database software. Its products include the legendary FileMaker Pro product line for Windows, Mac and the web, and the new Bento personal database for Mac. Millions of customers, from individuals to large organizations, rely on FileMaker, Inc. software to manage, analyze and share information. FileMaker, Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple Inc.

Source: FileMaker