The folks over at FileMaker have delivered one brilliant iPhone app. Bento for iPhone is an iPhone port of Bento - not some cut back imitation.

If you're looking for powerful information management on your iPhone then it's a no-brainer - buy Bento for iPhone. For $5.99, it can replace several other iPhone apps. Sure, there are a couple of rough edges but we're sure these will be sorted in the fullness of time.

My full review can be read over at Australian Macworld.

Forgive me the cryptic headline (fans of the Robert Redford movie Sneakers will know what I mean). Over at The Age a product round up on password managers has just been published.

In a utopian version of the world we live in, all information would be freely shared. But that's not how things are and most of us are drowning in usernames and passwords that we need to somehow remember in order to access information.

You can read it in the Green Guide supplement if you're in Melbourne (Asustralia, not Florida) or online by clicking this link.

 Passwords • Privacy • Secrets

Just following on from my post on Logos for Mac, it's worth mentioning another application that those into biblical scholarship might be interested in.

The Sword Project has the following mission:

Its purpose is to create cross-platform open-source tools, covered by the GNU General Public License, that allow programmers and Bible societies to write new Bible software more quickly and easily. Its secondary purpose is to amass a library of Bibles and other Scripture-related texts that can be used by all SWORD Project-based software.

I've used the Mac and Linux versions. The Mac version is my main Bible for preparing studies and searching for key texts. It'd be nice to have a version that works with Logos but coming at the perfect price (free) and with a wealth of different public domain resources including Bible translations, dictionaries and commentaries it's definitely worth a look.

 Bible • Sword Project

As a theology student (I'm at Ridley College in Melbourne) one of the tasks I regularly face is research. Finding articles for specific topics or for when I'm running a Bible study can be quite tricky. While the index in the back of the book is handy, having to trawl through the indexes of many books is very time consuming and is pre-supposed on the idea that I know what book the information I'm after is in. That's where e-Books come to the fore.

Many theological reference books are now available on CDs or DVDs. A substantial subset of those books are published in a specific format so that a common front-end can be used to access the entire library and then search across the library. Windows users have had access to the Libronix software for some time. However, Mac users have only recently been able to enter the fray with the release of Logos Bible Software for the Macintosh. Logos for Mac is currently in its first public beta release following no less that 11 alpha releases.

I've been using Logos for Mac since the last couple of alpha releases and now have the beta installed. The beta does have some limitations. For example, you can only install and access books that you have already unlocked using the Windows version of the software. This feature will be implemented in the final release.

The heart of Logos for Mac (the icon on the Dock is labelled as Libronix DLS) is the Library. this is where all the books in your electronic library are listed. At installation, you can choose where to store the books. If hard disk space is at a premium you could store your books on a USB stick. I chose to put mine in a specific folder in the Documents folder on my Mac (a MacBook Air running OS X 10.5.4). I'd previously purchased the The Essential IVP Reference Collection and BST New Testament CD-ROM [Affiliate Links] and installed them to a Mac running VMWare Fusion. That meant that I'd generated a license file that unlocked the resources in my library. Until the final release of Logos for Mac comes out, you'll need a system running Windows.

From my Windows installation, I synchronised my licenses with the Logos license server. When I ran through the Mac installation, I synchronised my licenses from the license server to my Mac. If I add any new books to my library I'll need to do that on my Windows set up first and then sync the licenses.

The proof of the pudding with software such as Logos is in the speed with which search results come back. I must say that I was very impressed. I was writing an essay on the teaching of the apostle James on wealth and poverty. The various queries I ran all returned their results quickly in a list that was categorised by book. A "by rank" sort option for search results didn't seem to make any difference but this is a beta so i don't expect everything to be working perfectly yet.

Reading a book on the screen was surprisingly good. Many people much prefer to be able to hold a book and flick the pages but some of the books, particularly many of the volumes in the The Essential IVP Reference Collection[Affiliate Link] are very large and a little unwieldy as bed-time reads go. However, the Libronix document/database format makes it easy to jump to specific sections using the book's table of contents. It'd be nice if the font that the book was displayed in could be changed but that's a minor issue as the serif font that's employed is pretty good.

If you're working on an essay or sermon and have opened a number of different reference works and need to stop working for a while, you can save a workspace easily so that you can return and keep working from where you left off.

I love books. I have a reasonably extensive library of fiction and non-fiction at home. However, for study, electronic books hold huge advantages over paper. For Mac users that are studying theology I'd strongly suggest looking at some of the electronic options that are available. Logos for Mac ought to be on your shopping list.

 Bible Study • Libronix • Logos

As the proud owner of a new MacBook Air I decided that i would start with a clean slate. Typically, I use the Migration Assistant to move all my applications and data from my old Mac to the new one. This is super easy but does bring some baggage - namely all the junk I've accumulated. So, this time I decided to start with a clean slate.

I cloned my MacBook Pro using SuperDuper and figured I could install applications manually to the MacBook Air and move my data to the Air as needed. I figured that I'd need to run Software Update to get all the Apple apps patched to the most recent versions and expected to do the same with Microsoft Office 2008. The Mac part of the updating went smoothly.

Microsoft Office 2008, on the other hand, was truly painful. After installing the software, i ran the update tool and downloaded the 150MB update. After that installed and all was well, I ran the updater again - just in case. There was another 150MB+ update. That's just dumb. Surely they could roll them together. So, another 30 minutes later I figured that i was done. But no, there was a third 150MB+ update to go.

The the folks at the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft- fix this up. Make a combo updater and make it available through your software update tool. Needing to run the updater three times is not acceptable.

 MacBook Air • Microsoft Office 2008

According to this story at iPhone Freak Safari has been licensed to Samsung for their SGH-L870 smartphone that' due out in Europe this August. When Apple ported Safari to Windows the reasoning was simple - give desktop users the same interface as their iPhone.

Porting Safari to Symbian S60 - I can't see why.

 Apple • iPhone • Safari

Almost two weeks ago I posted on an application I'd stumbled past called JoikuSpot. If you're running a cell phone that uses the Symbian S60 operating system and has WiFi then JoikuSpot is a must have. It converts your humble 3G phone into a portable WiFi access point.

This evening, on the drive home from work I had my nephew in the car. We fired up JoikuSpot on my Nokia N95 and he spent some time surfing the Internet using his iPod touch.'

How cool is that?

The only danger is that mobile data costs can accumulate quickly, particularly as the iPod touch uses a fully featured web browser that supports most rich content (except for Flash).

 JoikuSpot • Nokia N95 • s60 • Symbian • WiFi

I've been messing about with the beta version of Nokia Maps 2 for a few weeks now and it's very good software. Local maps for much of the world are free, as is the software. What costs is a subscription to use navigation services.

The beta I've been running is quite fast and easy to use. If only the battery life of my N95 wasn't so poor. Without the car charger, GPS kills a battery in only a couple of hours. However, when I was recently in Sydney, and only a little lost, I could find where I was and where I wanted to go quickly. If I paid up the extra shekels for navigation I'd have arrived even closer to actual time I was expected for dinner!

 Nokia Maps 2.0 • Nokia N95

Every now and then a piece of software really grabs me. JoikuSpot is one such application. This software turns mobile phones running Symbian S60, like my Nokia N95, into portable WiFi hotspots.

JoikuSpot is a free download, which gives a 90 day trial version. It can be either sent directly to your mobile via SMS from the download site or you can download it and then copy it to your phone manaully. I downloaded it and used Bluetooth to send it to the phone. Installation took only a few minutes and a few seconds later I had a WiFi hotspot running from my phone.

The main reason I was looking for an app like this was for my iPod touch. I connected the touch to the Internet through my N95's data connection over WiFi and it just worked. The downside is that there no real security as I couldn't set WEP, WPA or even a basic username/password for log in. The Read Me suggest you can but i couldn't find the appropriate option. However, there is a log so you can see how many clients are connected to your phone.

Only HTTP and HTTPS are supported. FTP and IMAP support will come soon. Given that JoikuSpot is still in beta I'm not surprised that the feature set is still incomplete.

Why use this rather than sharing a connection over Bluetooth? The answer is easy. Firstly WiFi is capable of faster data transfers than Bluetooth so you'll have a better web browsing experience. Secondly, and in my view more importantly, this is much easier than pairing a Bluetooth device and configuring a modem connection on your laptop.

Windows Mobile users aren't left out. There is also a JoikuSpot, called WMWifiRouter, downloadable from Joiku.com that does the same with Windows Mobile smartphones.

Thus far, JoikuSpot has passed my "just works" test.

 Internet Connection Sharing • JoikuSoft • N95 • WiFi HotSpot

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the increase in GPS unit thefts. I received a comment today from "jolly" alerting me to a new service from AntiTheft.

There are a few of these sorts of services around now. They all work in a similar way. Pay a subscription cost and load some software on the device. The software pings a web server somewhere whenever the device accesses the Internet. They keep a central register of register devices and when a device that's reported as stolen pings the server, they alert you as to the IP address and location (or something approximating the location - they don't promise 100% accurate geographic positioning) and the ISP that the device is connecting to the Internet through.

This isn't the only service of its type. I've looked at some others over the last three or four years and they all work in a similar way. I guess I'd be a little sceptical of the application of this software on a GPS device as they don't commonly access the Internet. Some do but I doubt that many people connect their GPS unit the Internet.

As well GPS devices (which is where I started) this service can be used with laptops (Windows and Mac), mobile phones, PDAs, iPods, PSP, flash drives and external hard disks. It costs $30 for a three-year subscription.

 GPS Theft • Mobile Theft • Security