Bento takes its inspiration from the compartmentalised containers used to serve bento lunches and dinners - everything in one place with the contents not all jumbled together, but stored in neat compartments. The marketing for Bento seems a bit confused about what it does - the material from the company that makes it (the database specialists FileMaker) calls it an "amazing personal organiser", a "stylish personal database" and is pitched at those keeping track of their lists in spreadsheets wanting extra features. Having given it a good test run, I'm pretty happy with what it is and what it does.

I'm not entirely sure what happened to HyperStudio to see it almost disappear from our computers entirely...and frankly, I don't care. What I care about more is that HyperStudio, after far too long a hiatus, is back and absolutely better than ever. I've had the opportunity to use a prerelease version over recent months. This isn't simply a new version of a much beloved application. It's one that realises times have changed and one that takes full advantage of so many of the recent technologies available to computer users.