UPDATED! Filemaker Releases Bento For iPod Touch – News Of The Day

Update- We’ve added a quick video look at the end.

I used Bento, a consumer level version of the FileMaker database, when it first came out a little bit over a year ago. I’ve never been a huge database user but I can see how incredibly useful it could be. The application looked great, was easy to use, and integrated with iCal and my address book beautifully. The problem was, there was no connection to my iPhone or iPod touch. And when I say "no connection" I mean "no connection" — there was neither an iPhone app or iPhone web access. Since my iPhone had already become so important to my computing this made Bento all but unusable for me. When Version 2.0 of the application was released and required me to pay the full price rather than a discounted upgrade price I didn’t bother to purchase it. That may have just changed and I may be buying the $49 application.

The company just released an iPhone app that syncs all of the databases between my iMac and my handheld seamlessly. What’s particularly nice is that the iPhone application is downright gorgeous (as apps go). It displays each of my databases using the familiar Cover Flow interface and allows me to access and manipulate all of the data. This means that I now have the ability to have a powerful database on both my handheld and iMac that are constantly in sync.

There are some rather significant downsides.

The Mac application costs $49 and the iPhone application costs $4.99. That means this isn’t an impulse buy. If you have a need for a good clean usable database, however it’s not too expensive.

There’s also the limitation I just ran into editable only sync with one hand held at a time. that means that those of us who use both an iPhone and an iPod touch need to choose which handheld sync.

Finally, the app is currently portrait only. I think having portrait and landscape ought to be required from this point forward but, then again, no one asked me. Portrait is fine for the database but having the option would have been nice.

These are, however, small considerations in light of the incredible power of the new iPhone application brings to the database. I’ve downloaded a trial of the desktop application and just purchased the iPhone app. I’ll have more insight into it after using it for awhile. In the meantime you can get more information by visiting the FileMaker site here.

Here’s a quick video look to give you a better sense of the app.