A personal database for Mac users. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. The makers of FileMaker Pro....are out with an update to Bento....a database program for folks who would normally shy away from even the word database. It is designed to be friendly....and usable....right out of the box. Product marketing manager Beth Nagengast...

"We ship with more than twenty pre-designed templates. Because we've been doing databases for so long, we know what the top uses are. Managing your contacts has always been number one. People want to not only just track names and phone numbers, but they want to add more stuff to what they normally track, then what comes with their address book. They want to track all the events associated with that person. They want to look at emails associated with that person. Pictures. And Bento allows you to track a lot more information about all of your contacts."

It can also be useful for people involved in all kinds of organizations and for keeping track of different types of collections....everything from recipes to DVD movies. New this year are functions that will make spreadsheet users more comfortable with Bento...and....

"We also added a lot of different new ways to view your data and edit your data. So once everything's in Bento, people want to continue to manipulate it and make their database grow so they can organize more information. So we've added a lot of new views and a lot of neat little editing tips."

The price...under fifty dollars. On the downside...unlike big brother FileMaker...Bento is only available for the Mac. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.