Designed specifically for Mac OS X Leopard, Bento offers one place to put your important information, including: contacts, calendars, projects, and events. Bento automatically displays contacts and calendars kept within Address Book and iCal, with no need to re-enter existing names, phone numbers, email addresses or upcoming events. “Bento is the personal database for the millions of Mac users who appreciate the elegance and ease of use of their Mac,” said FileMaker president Dominique Goupil. “With Bento, we are providing an incredibly easy way to manage all your information — iCal calendar events, Address Book contacts, digital media and files — all in one place, effortlessly.”

Not rain, nor wind, nor chill of night would stop German shoppers from getting their hands on a new iPhone. Shortly after midnight, T-Mobile began selling the Apple iPhone in downtown Cologne, Germany, where an estimated 400 people braved the harsh weather. T-Mobile had planned ahead and handed out umbrellas, blankets, coffee, and pretzels to the waiting customers. A few radio stations offered more than 1,000 euros for the first iPhone purchased, but the buyer preferred to keep the phone.

With Rory Cellan-Jones (BBC News) describing the scene in London as “mayhem”, fans “started queuing at stores overnight” in order to be one of the first to get their hands on a new iPhone. The iPhone has gone on sale at more than 1,300 stores around the UK with each customer limited to two handsets each. After waiting in line for 26 hours, Tom Jalinski was the first out of the London Apple Store with his new iPhone and proclaimed it, “worth the wait.”

Create a Keynote ’08 presentation and you can share it as a QuickTime movie, a PDF document, or as a photo book that can be given to clients after a sales call. Learn how by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

Esther J. Cepeda (Chicago Sun-Times) has discovered the “voluminous” selection of sports entertainment podcasts available at the iTunes Store, proclaiming, “iPod can be sport geek’s all-encompassing radio and TV.” She also notes that the iTunes Store features podcasts about “every imaginable subject.”

Still “hooked” after all these months, Mike Wendland (Detroit Free Press) remains smitten with his iPhone. “Every week, I’ve been getting the latest and greatest of the mobile phones being introduced for holiday sales. And while some are promising, none can come close to the iPhone in ease, elegance and excellence of design. Almost five months now since it was introduced in the United States, it remains not just the best cell phone I’ve ever used but the most revolutionary piece of personal technology I’ve ever used.”

“With Logic Studio,” reports Peter Kirn (Macworld), “Apple has transformed Logic from a deep but difficult program into one of the most streamlined and elegant music environments of its kind.” Kirn gives Logic Studio a 4.5-mouse rating (out of five), concluding that its “ streamlined, fewer clicks-to-music philosophy throughout, combined with more precise tools for audio editing and surround, make this a landmark release.”

At the University of Cincinnati’s Conservatory of Music, “electronic media” majors use MacBook Pro computers and the iLife suite of digital authoring tools to hone the skills they need for careers in audio and video production, radio, broadcast journalism, and new media. “The MacBook Pro allows us to leverage the iLife software suite,” explains Assistant Professor Richard Cawood. “This gives students an entire tapestry of tools for video, audio, web, and photographic work.”

Go to a concert, and you’re likely to see a tightly choreographed program on stage and an even more elaborately choreographed multimedia extravaganza playing out on the huge, multi-million-pixel displays backing up the on-stage performance by your favorite artists. Like the dazzling video shows created by XL Video. Specialists in huge-format video, XL Video uses “Macs throughout the whole process, from concept drawings to content creation to final playback. And Final Cut is the linking piece of the chain,” says Richard Burford, head of XL Video.

“That tall mocha Frappuccino never sounded so good,” comments Ellen Lee (San Francisco Chronicle) as she downs her mocha while testing out the iTunes WiFi Music Store at a San Francisco Starbucks. “The new service lets customers shop for music wirelessly through iTunes at Starbucks for free,” Lee explains. It made its debut in New York and Seattle Starbucks coffee shops earlier this year, just opened all across the San Francisco Bay area this week, and “is expected to be available in the nation’s 6,000 company-operated Starbucks coffee shops by the end of 2009.”