FileMaker today announced The Bento Christmas Kit, a free, fun way to get organised this Christmas – on a Mac or on the go using an iPhone or iPad. The Bento Christmas Kit organises your Christmas cards and mailing labels, helps you plan parties, track gift lists, send thank you notes and accomplish other Christmas tasks with style and ease.
The Bento Christmas Kit includes a free, 30-day trial of Bento 4 for Mac, FileMaker’s popular personal database, and three additional templates that put Christmas details all in one place. Filemaker’s Bento is the most-popular line of personal database products for Mac, iPhone and iPad, receiving 4 Stars from both MacFormat and Macworld UK.
The Christmas Kit comes with a Cards and Labels template that allows you to apply the power of a personal database to organise the sending and receiving of Christmas cards. Easily print mailing labels, check off who sent what and when, track card recipients’ names, addresses, family members, pertinent notes and even add images of the actual photos and cards received. Plus, the databases can be synchronised with Bento for iPhone, Bento for iPad so you will always have details at hand when you’re away from your Mac. Bento for iPhone and Bento for iPad are sold separately on the App Store.
The Christmas Kit also comes with a Party Planning template that makes it easy to plan parties, track RSVPs, and all the tasks associated with putting on company events, cocktail parties, and family dinners.
On the gift-giving side, the Christmas Kit includes a Gift List template for tracking and budgeting gifts. With this template, you can track purchases and costs and add a picture of the present. The template also tracks donations, and will provide a holistic tally of spending.
“Everyone wants a stress-free Christmas, filled with fun and laughter and no last-minute scrambling around to do tasks. That’s why our Bento Christmas Kit is a perennial favourite among Bento users,” said Ryan Rosenberg, vice president of marketing and services for FileMaker, Inc., in the press release. “With a little advance planning and the Bento 4 Christmas Kit, you can be prepared for the busy Christmas season ahead – and have fun doing it.”
The Bento Christmas Kit is available now for download:
• Bento Christmas Kit – UK Edition
• Bento 2011 Holiday Kit
FileMaker is the leader in easy-to-use database software. Millions of people, from individuals to some of the world’s largest companies, rely on FileMaker software to manage, analyse and share essential information. The company’s products are the FileMaker Pro line – versatile database software for teams and organisations, for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and the web – and Bento, the personal database for Mac, iPhone and iPad. FileMaker, Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple.
Source: FileMaker, Inc.
Since Apple now owns FileMaker, I really don’t see why Bento isn’t part of iLife. As amazing as GarageBand is, I have a feeling that Bento would get significantly more usage if it were a part of the package than the amount of use GarageBand gets it. I can understand, to a certain point, how GarageBand’s existence as a part of the free package that comes with every Mac serves a specific purpose (showing off the friendliness and magic of Mac computing), but rounding out an iLife package with a home database tool that is just as friendly would really complete the package. It isn’t like Bento is a major revenue stream for Apple that would seriously affect bottom line if it were bundled for free.
Because a visionary like Ballmer isn’t running Apple…yet. iWork is still stuck in 1999…or is that 2009…whatever it is, there’s no update in sight.
I’m not sure where is this sense of entitlement coming from. Exactly how often is Apple required to update any specific software they produce? Let’s look at this from another angle: how many users are clamoring for fixes/updates to the existing iWork? Exactly what is it there that isn’t correctly working, and that needs to be updated?
Then again; it is possible that my sarcasm detection device is turned off at the moment…
Bento should to be included in iWork.
It’s tough to say where it should fit in if it were included. It definitely is not an iLife product, but it does integrate with iCal and Address Book. Being M$ Office Pro used to include Access, iWork makes sense.
I wish it integrated better with iCal though. If you use the program, you know what I mean.