Filed under: Software, Productivity, Reviews
Real World Bento: the formidable, personal database
It suddenly occurred to me that my needs for software have changed.It was while I was browsing for a native Mac application for monitoring weight loss that I realized that little out there would suffice if it couldn't sync with my iPhone. While there are several popular online sites for tracking diet and exercise, I wanted something that would sync with my Mac and that I could maintain from both my desktop and iPhone without having to go through a third-party website.
I didn't find that hoped-for software, but I did discover Bento.
I've had a love affair with bento lunches since I began Japanese studies in 2000. They're still my favorite lunches to pack, and the concept behind them is simple: A compact way, yet attractive for those who put the time into it, of carrying a lunch. Everything is tucked away in its own compartment and it's easy to access.
FileMaker took this concept of bento lunches and used it to make Bento, a database application that works hand in hand with your Mac that we've covered quite a bit and also now has an iPhone version. It is supposed to be a database program for the rest of us -- you know, those of us who open up a spreadsheet in Excel or Numbers and suddenly go cross-eyed and immediately move onto something else ... or just never bothered using a database program in the first place.
"After all," I thought once upon a disorganized time, "I will never use something like this on a day to day basis."
I considered it briefly when Bento 2 first came out, but discarded the idea. However, in a stroke of excellent marketing on Filemaker's part, they give you 50 ways to integrate a database program into your daily life that I discovered upon searching for diet/exercise software.
I realized that, hey, there were quite a lot of things in my life that could be tracked via Bento. My fiancé and I are in the beginning stages of planning our wedding. I'm going on a trip to the United Kingdom. I'm about to start writing a graphic novel. I'm doing freelance work. I just started expanding my tea collection -- and many other things. For the first time, I could see a need for this. But, will I actually use it? I've downloaded the free trial of Bento for the desktop and grabbed the iPhone version from the App Store to try it out.
There are many of you who already use Bento or other database programs and are quite versed in it. But this series of articles is for the rest of us: Those who want try Bento and have no clue as to how to make it work for them, or who are new to Macs and haven't considered it before. With a little elbow grease, and a 30-day window in which to try it out, we're going to see how easy it is to adapt Bento to the real world.
I realized that, hey, there were quite a lot of things in my life that could be tracked via Bento. My fiancé and I are in the beginning stages of planning our wedding. I'm going on a trip to the United Kingdom. I'm about to start writing a graphic novel. I'm doing freelance work. I just started expanding my tea collection -- and many other things. For the first time, I could see a need for this. But, will I actually use it? I've downloaded the free trial of Bento for the desktop and grabbed the iPhone version from the App Store to try it out.
There are many of you who already use Bento or other database programs and are quite versed in it. But this series of articles is for the rest of us: Those who want try Bento and have no clue as to how to make it work for them, or who are new to Macs and haven't considered it before. With a little elbow grease, and a 30-day window in which to try it out, we're going to see how easy it is to adapt Bento to the real world.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ton said 10:59AM on 5-14-2009
Jeez, that was 1Password's autosubmit button doing its dirty work when all I wanted was to do was auto fill-in my username and password.
I noticed you're a Megan, but you can safely delete the comment above. It has nothing to do Bento.
This comment has. I hope you can put Bento Touch here through its paces mostly, as it has no 30-day trial mode. It'll be an interesting series.
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Megan Lavey said 11:03AM on 5-14-2009
Well, even us Megans have to get up from the computer every so often. ^_~ First comment deleted. I know it was an accident. As for the Bento Touch, it's definitely going to go through its paces since a lot of its usefulness for my needs will hinge on it syncing back to the computer. I've already been testing it out in that context.
(Someone else was telling me about the latest ad featuring someone with my name ... I'm suddenly very scared to watch it ...)
danny said 11:46AM on 5-14-2009
yes, please, let us know all about Bento. Sound useful.
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Jay said 12:45PM on 5-14-2009
Bento seems useful but I just can't seem to get it to do what I want.
For example, I want to store my ebook collection and download metadata from isbndn. But I can't seem to get the data into Bento without entering it manually, which would be a pain for hundreds of files.
What I would like to be able to do is add the file to Bento, have it parse the filename and download the info from the web. This would require 3 things that Bento doesn't support.
1. Allow scripting for parsing the filename and accessing the web
3. Import a file from a url, it only shows the filesystem
2. Import xml, the import files all seem to be variations of spreedsheet formats (if scripting were available I could parse it that way, but automation would be nicer).
Bento seems amazing for managing data, but I just can't seem to find a convenient way to get that data into the app. If I am missing something someone please let me know.
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Johnny said 12:56PM on 5-14-2009
This is when you need the more powerful FileMaker. There is nothing you can dream of that can't be done in FileMaker if you take time to figure it out. FileMaker can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of FileMaker. That's why, as I said below, I am really curious about how people use Bento because, as a developer, it is really crippled compared to FM, but I'm sure it has some great uses and is probably stupid easy to set up.
Jay said 1:31PM on 5-14-2009
I'm a developer as well, but $499 for the advanced version (which is what appears to be needed for the development tools) plus the Canadian conversion. Just doesn't seem practical for a simple db. It may be time to dust off xCode and just build an app.
SpinThis! said 2:34PM on 5-14-2009
Just bust out a little PHP, Perl, or whatever language you know to parse the XML into a format Bento can read. That's what I would try first. SOAP in PHP in pretty easy and parsing XML is straightforward.
Or if you're a developer, download mysql (or pg) and make your own database. If you do web programming, that's even easier. HTML is easy to manipulate, you can format it for web or iPhone, and it's anywhere you need it. Native apps are cool but web apps are vastly underrated imo.
Johnny said 12:51PM on 5-14-2009
I am a FileMaker developer so although I don't really have any use for it myself, I'm very curious to see how other people use Bento. Hope it works out for you.
As for the wedding planning, I made a very useful FileMaker solution for keeping track of some things when I recently got married. Mainly, we were able to store our main guest list and then have it generate lists and print envelopes for the bridal shower, couples shower, rehearsal dinner, and the wedding itself. As we received RSVPs, we were able to mark them and have a running total guest count. We also used it to keep track of gifts we received for sending out 'Thank You' cards. I would have just created a form letter filling in the 'gift' field on each one, but everyone told me they had to be hand written and personalized. Geez.
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Greg West said 1:03PM on 5-14-2009
My problem with Bento is that you can't easily establish multiple Bento files- like ITunes managing all your music, a single Bento file contains all of your databases. I don't want my financial records or other personal data sharing shelves with my DVD collection. At least iTunes allows you to have multiple files.
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Chris Dunphy said 1:46PM on 5-14-2009
Change is good. Usually.
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Chris Dunphy said 6:24PM on 5-16-2009
I tried out Bento last night, and the iPhone version seems to be lacking what seems to me to be the most important feature - the ability to do searches.
The search feature does not seem to allow me to search just against just a field. For example - people who live in "CA" shouldn't also show me people named "Baca".
Maybe I am missing something obvious. But a database without searching is kind of pointless...
- Chris
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Abby Silva said 3:53PM on 5-19-2009
Chris,
Not able to search was a big issue for us. Fortunately, Database Viewer Plus App has fast search, so it worked out well for us.
Abby
Erick said 2:09PM on 5-14-2009
Anyone have any success making a "Patient Tracker" template? I downloaded the trial version and was tinkering around with it but couldn't really get it to my liking. Mainly just want a way to keep track of daily lab values for each patient I have on my iPhone.
Thanks!
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Galley said 2:10PM on 5-14-2009
Love the bento lunches as art.
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Eric said 3:42PM on 5-14-2009
Bento will not work until you can import XML, and have some sort of basic SQL access.
What does one do if they have a set of data that gets updated from another program? There is really no way to merge it in to Bento and keep what you have already linked relinked into the new file. At least in what I have seen.
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scott said 6:21PM on 5-14-2009
I looked into Bento & decided not to buy it because of their flawed approach to printing mailing labels. Your data has to be pulled from Bento and put into Contacts to format the label. So all of a sudden I had personal & business contacts all mixed up. If they would ever come up with a simple solution to printing labels from a Bento db without jumping through several hoops I would buy it.
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Maddy said 2:33AM on 5-15-2009
I will never use something like this on a day to day basis.
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Todd said 10:44AM on 5-15-2009
This isn't a criticism specific to Megan, but I've noticed a trend in reviews on TUAW where the author goes through some kind of personal transformation around a piece of software being reviewed. In this case, it's not even a review but instead we're being told just to consider Bento. Just think about using it. You know, nudge nudge.
And it's getting old. These are sounding more and more like cloaked endorsements without basis and without backing facts. We don't need the journal of a personal growth to get the value of an app under review. I think there are still reviews at TUAW that are fair and level criticism when due, but this is just a puff-piece on Bento, and it raises suspicions at one of my favorite sites, I'm sad to say.
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Todd said 3:53PM on 5-15-2009
I want to reply to my own comment here to say that Megan got in touch with me personally to explain how this post fits in with an approach she's taking to app reviews. Without speaking for her, I can say that I can look at this post in the sense that it's to set up the intention to test what is an attractive looking app against real-world use to see if it actually makes life easier. This makes sense to me, and I really appreciate Megan taking the time to write me personally, and her maturity in reading my comment in a constructive way even though it was pre-coffee bitchy.
Great work, Megan, and I look forward to the results of your experience.
pfrishauf said 7:17PM on 5-15-2009
I bought Bento 1.0 and was very disappointed, and hoping FileMaker would addresses Bento's shortcomings in future Bento releases. Not only did they fail to do that, there was no good price for an upgrade to 2.0. Here's what I wrote in my review of 1.0 on Amazon,and the criticism applies to 2.0, as well:
Bento promises interoperability with Address Book and Calendar, but it is not complete field-for-field interoperability. For example, let's say you have images and photographs in your Mac Address Book. You expect the images to show up in Bento, just like the address and phone information. Wrong! Bento expects you to re-import every image into Bento. I have thousands of photos in my Address Book, and it would take hours to do this.
Bento is based on the Filemaker database, so you would expect users to be able to link one person in a contact record to any number of other people. Wrong again! While Outlook supports this very useful feature, neither Address Book nor Bento can empower you to do this. This is a significant shortcoming, as users tend to remember people and events by recalling other people at an event. For example, you remember you met a certain person through David Smith, but you can't remember her name. But if you had her linked to David in your database you could easily find her -- and if her picture happened to be in that record, even better! Similarly, you should be able to link calendar events to people. Outlook users who use these feature come to love them, and it's also one reason why Chapura software's KeySuite for Outlook Synchronization program is so popular on the Palm -- it supports all these Outlook features that out-of-the-box Palm Contacts does not. The Mac world would greatly benefit from both desktop and iPhone software that did this. We would be smarter and more productive!
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