Teacher is top of the class with his Bento

I'm a trainee teacher in the UK. I've just started my first school placement and have 170 pupils, 10 class schedules, 37 lesson plans with feedback and 5 project plans to keep track of.

The usual way to track all of this is to carry a full A4 binder around with you and constantly flip from one end to the other to follow all the connections.

But not me – I have Bento on my Mac at home and sync it with my iPad which I can easily carry around the school and look at while crammed into small rooms for staff meetings.

Now whenever anyone asks me about a child I can instantly tell them what classes I have them for, when I'll next see them, what their educational needs are and how they've behaved in my classes. I'm the envy of the staff-room!

Also, with 170 new names to learn, I can always see their pictures alongside my lesson plan and easily pull up their history. Has little Johnny forgotten his pencil? Well, he also forgot it the last two lessons – time for a quiet word…

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Filmmaking Made Easy

Hunter Weeks makes memorable documentaries using Bento.

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Plumber Works Smarter with Bento

With the demands of running my own plumbing business as well as being a musician and writer I needed to work much smarter and knew that a database of customers and jobs would really make a difference.

I bought Bento and from the off I felt at home with it. I have my Address Book contacts in Bento indicating whether they are a customer, a supplier, a friend etc. which enables me to generate instant sub-sets for mailings etc. A separate file for jobs is linked to my iCal To-Do list. Having created a job status field in Bento I can track a work project from the initial customer contact through to invoicing and job completion. I have just obtained an iPhone, sync'd using MobileMe so that I can access customer information on the move and even have plans to get an iPad to enable me to produce quotes whilst with the customer.

I've also received some useful tips from a single "One to One" Bento session in my local Apple store but I reckon that in 6 months time, I'll need to upgrade to Filemaker Pro…

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The Effects of Visual Chaos

Noted visual special effects editor and filmmaker Hasraf Dulull tracks every aspect of his film projects, including his short animated film, FUBAR using Bento 4.

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Freelance writer empowers his business

As a freelance writer and author, trying to keep track of articles, features, stories or books can be complicated. I used to use huge spreadsheets, but relating the information between each project was difficult.

Bento helps me achieve this and more. With Bento I can have a main Project Tracking Page that lists all the basic information, and then several subpages that track everything from title and word count to copy rights and invoice details. This has really empowered my business! I also have a couple of Smart Collections which enable me to identify projects where I haven't had any contact for a while and track any outstanding invoices, which is key to maintaining cashflow. There have been occasions when editors have claimed they've not received my submissions but Bento's record keeping abilities have meant that I've been able to go back to those editors and forward a copy of their acknowledgment email! Bento's simplicity makes processing this data so much easier and I am now in control of my business.

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Bento revolutionises small medical practice

Being a small medical practice but needing to keep up with technology had been a frustrating and indeed expensive time until Bento came along.

"Now I can keep patient contact info, treatment records and case history all in one place with the added advantage of being able to keep letters, reports and even medical imaging in the same files. Patients can easily be sent email reminders for appointments and stock inventory, which I have linked to patient records, allows me to also view products relevant to that person. This is so helpful when placing orders, as I am able to see what to keep in stock."

"Bento has revolutionised my small business and I am encouraging many of my Mac friends and business associates to use this software. Specialist surgery software with this type of capability would normally cost over £1,000, impossible for a small business. A huge thank you for Bento!"

Maureen Flett, The Sportsphysio.com

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Bento Event Planner
Intrinsic Organiser for Film Festival

"I am organising a film festival. To organise a festival of any kind can result in a big notepad or, worse, a mound of post-it notes. There are contacts, venues, meetings, budgets, expenses and just miscellaneous notes that are useful links or reminders. In addition to that, there are all the tasks that need to be done. It's quite a lot of organising and that's just the text data, not to mention pictures, documents and submitted media. Luckily, that's why we use computers these days and luckier still, I came across Bento and it's event planning template.

Bento Event Planner easily categorises all this data collected from meetings, web searches and casual conversation. I've got all my contacts collated with important emails and notes of meetings held together. I can add pictures to these contacts, I don't forget a face, but I can a name! Similarly with venues, I can document their availability and facilities they provide. I can track my expenses and perhaps, best of all I can carry all this information with me in my pocket, courtesy of the iPhone version of Bento.

I think Bento has become an intrinsic part of my workflow for managing information." Simon Munn

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Counting on Bento

"We are an accounting firm that only uses Apple Macs, and have over 400 clients. I use Bento on my MacBook Pro at my home office and in our serviced office in London. While I'm out and about I use my iPad and iPhone to look up customers on the fly. It is an essential part of my equipment and I would be slowed down if I had to rely on excel or a hard copy. I sync my devices on a daily basis and find it very quick and useful. It has been such a time saving device I am looking at FileMaker to further our capabilities." David Keohane

Teaching English Using Pop Music

Geoff Taylor is delighted with Bento 3 on his MacBook Pro, and the app Bento for iPod touch. As a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, pop songs are a good source of authentic listening and language practice. Now with Bento 3, he can search a pre-prepared catalogue of suitable songs in his iTunes library and almost instantly find those that meet the criteria of his lesson, such as "Grammar = present continuous, Topic = weather".

Within minutes, his students can listen to the song selected, e.g. "Everybody's Talking" by Nilsson, on his iPod touch via the classroom loudspeaker setup, and working on a "gap-fill" or "correct the mistakes" exercise, before a more general lesson on weather vocabulary.

The Bento app on his iPod touch is handy if he hears a song on the radio that would be good for a future class. He just quickly keys in the title and downloads it later from iTunes.

The Bento app is also handy for updating his personal database of movies he has seen, whether he is in the car after his cinema visit, or sitting on the living room sofa. Then, whenever it's convenient, he syncs the app databases with the full versions on his MacBook Pro.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Geoff. A £15 iTunes Gift Card will be in the post shortly.

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Bento for iPad is a Gem

Jewellery maker Amy Holms uses Bento for iPad to manage home and business on the go.

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Chocolate Database

Some time ago, a colleague of Jeff Dunn brought a bar of chocolate to work that was 99% cocoa solids. It was like eating compressed cocoa powder! Not long after, Jeff brought in a bar of Madagascan chocolate and this was delicious, with a smooth flavour and creamy finish. They were now becoming intrigued about the world of chocolate and Jeff researched the subject on the internet and found that chocolate can be as varied and full of character as any wine or cheese.

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Art Consultancy Business

Having left a 9-5 job to home school their children and start a new business in Art Consultancy, Jude Armani couldn't extol the benefits of Bento further.

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Oakroyd TV Casting Agency

Paula McKie runs a casting agency for TV called 'agency Oakroyd' who needed something really simple to manage a growing list of artistes and TV production contracts.

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Bento Rocks

Bento is the newest member of L.A.-based rock band Hydrovibe. Lead singer Heather St. Marie uses her custom Bento databases to keep track of concert venues, merchandise, and more.

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Dentistry on the Go

Dentist Bia Kunze had a simple idea: If you can't make it to the dentist, the dentist will come to you. Kunze is a mobile dentist in Brazil, treating house or hospital-bound patients in and around the city of Curitiba. To manage her practice on the go, she uses Bento for iPhone.

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Home Search, Simplified

First-time homebuyer Jessica Fonseca uses Bento for iPhone to track potential properties.

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Organising Inspiration

Donovan Krebs has thoughts to organise. Lots of them. The artist's mind can be filled with a maelstrom of ideas, inspirations, concepts and tasks. Without a way to manage it all, he'd be swamped. That's why he turned to Bento.

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Laws of Organisation

Running your own business can be complicated. Add the responsibilities of being a spouse and parent and it's enough to make anyone frazzled. That's why lawyer Andrew Titus uses Bento to organise almost everything, from his practice to his home life.

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Faith, devotion and Bento

Running a church can get complex. There are services to schedule, parties to plan, fundraisers to run and potential parishioners to woo. It's a lot to keep track of, and that's why Pastor Mike Dennis of Morocco Church in Temperance, MI, uses Bento to manage it all.

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Duke Ellington Catalogue

When he set about cataloguing the recorded works of Duke Ellington using Bento, the personal database from FileMaker, Findsen had no idea it might lead to the start of a book about this jazz legend.

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Piedmont Avenue Clinic

His practice requires an easy way to track workers compensation cases. Bento eases the pain and solves the problem.

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Tiannan Woods Ranch

How does a daughter's allergic reaction to milk and raising prize-winning goats factor into the use of Bento, the new personal database from FileMaker?

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LJT Sports

Heather Wellborn and Nimoy Triplet of LJT Sports find Bento an indispensible tool to keep track of their clients' progress. Not only do they track training and nutrition, they also store photos and videos that they use to analyse and improve their clients' form.

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