Reading

iBook: This could kill the Kindle for reading downloaded books, but the iPad is heavier and harder to hold. The iBook application on the iPad looks like a bookshelf, with all of your downloads right there. It’s easier to find free books here than it is on the Kindle. We searched for “Daddy Long Legs,” the 1912 classic on which the movie is based. It came up on our Kindle as available for 99 cents but it was free from the iBook app. The same thing happened for “The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.”  Of course 99 cents isn’t much, but you can’t beat free. On the other hand, when you buy a Kindle book, you can read it on your computer, phone, iPod Touch or iPad; if you use the iBook app, the book stays on the iPad.

Movies and Video

Besides YouTube, we tried out Netflix, which streams movies to subscribers. (We pay $9 a month for unlimited streaming, and get a movie in the mail as often as we like as long as we send that back before getting the next one.)

News

You can read the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, or Time magazine and it looks almost exactly like the paper publication. The New York Times is available in an “Editor’s Choice” edition.  As with everything else on the iPad, the screen is in full color and the picture is sharp. If you see a video in a story, you can tap and watch it.

Getting Organized

Bento for the iPad is a $5 app and is just like Bento for the Macintosh. It is a cut-down version of Filemaker, the powerful database program. Bento now has over 600 database templates you can download, and the iPad app opens with seven of them.

Templates include forms for address books, “to-do” lists, recipe files, projects, inventories, notes and expenses. Synchronize these with any Bento database info on your Mac.  Create a new library by tapping the “+” sign. Other templates are for contacts, event planning, items sold, exercise, membership list, etc.

See gallery of 20 free iPad apps

Here are a few Bento for the iPad tips:

1. Touch the “+” sign and drag it to create a new field.

2. When you are in “portrait” orientation (as opposed to “landscape”), click on the record count to see a list.

3. To change themes click on the “pencil” icon at the top.  Then look for the change theme button in upper left corner.

Users of Bento 3, the database for Mac users, can download more than 400 free database templates. These include templates for customer appointments, monthly bills, sales opportunities, medication records, lecture materials, job searches, scuba logs and even “beer hunting.”

Downloaded templates also work with the iPhone and iPod Touch versions of Bento.

The FileMaker Training Series consists of 12 modules with step-by-step instructions on key topics such as scripts and publishing databases to the web. The series is available from filemaker.com for $99.

Expense tracking isn’t a magic solution to budgetary woes, but it helps. Jefferson was an acknowledged spendthrift, for example, with an immense wine collection and a taste for fashionable clothes. He was often out of pocket and would sometimes borrow money from his slaves, keeping track of every penny, of course, and the date he paid it back.

Of course you can do that too – not borrowing from slaves, but tracking every penny. We’ve been testing a solution from TheExpenseTracker.com, that makes it a snap to track of how much you spend. It costs $10 to set up and $10 a month for a six-month contract. Instead of having to save all your receipts during the day and enter them into a database at night, you can do it on the fly with a cell phone and this voice-activated service. For example, as you’re leaving a grocery store, you can call a special phone number, enter your PIN number, and tell the robot voice that answers the phone how much you just spent on the “grocery” category. The robot tells you what you have left of the limit you previously set for yourself, and your personal spreadsheet, available online, is automatically updated. A daily email gives you all your latest tallies.

Setting up was easy. After signing up at TheExpenseTracker.com, you can tell the service how much you have available each month after taxes. There is a list of dozens of categories, already filled out with suggested amounts for each. You can click “edit” next to any category to apportion expenses that fit your lifestyle and you can also add and delete categories.

An obvious thought is why not save $10 a month by skipping the service all together. That’s the way to go if you have Thomas Jefferson’s habit of writing down every cost; we found we don’t. We liked how TheExpenseTracker.com made us stop and think about where our money is going.

To create a new database, sign up on the web site, Blist.com, and click “new.” On the right-hand side of the screen you’ll see a list of possible subject headings. To have a “text” column, drag a text icon onto the blankspreadsheet type screen. Dragging the photo icon onto the work area creates a photo column, and so on. Columns can have any heading you want. You can even have a database within a database. In short, clicking on a subject that is actually a database, opens up the new database.

Blist has the look of a spreadsheet, with rows and columns for entering data. The intersection of a row and a column is a cell. But unlike a spreadsheet, the cells can contain just about any kind of information. And they contain an infinite amount of it. That’s right: infinite. (Though there’s a going to be a physical limit at some point just in storage.)

If you have a column of photos, these can be related to the names of companies, people or places. Let your mouse pointer hover over a name, and a thumbnail photo can appear as well, helping to jog your memory.

You can have columns for web sites and a column of stars. The stars can be used to rank those sites or rank the item in any list. Another column can hold documents. Another can hold links. You can have all related items automatically linked together so that when you call up a name, be it a person, company or subject, everything related to that name will come up in pages.

A set of “filters” let you search according to your own criteria. If you drag an icon for “ratings,” for example, onto Blist’s so-called selection canvas, and then click on “5 stars,” you’ll get a filtered list of only items that have received your five-star ratings. If you search for restaurants, only five-star restaurants will come up.

We have not seen anything this elegant in any other kind of program, except perhaps the new word processor, BuzzWord, that just came out from Adobe.

Bento is good for the usual phone book applications, plus organizing events, tracking projects, recording inventory, making libraries, etc. In short, unless you are operating a large business, most database tasks are relatively simple and can be handled easily by a program like this. About 140,000 copies have been downloaded from FileMaker.com since the program came out in mid-November. User ratings are very high.

FileMaker Pro is an insanely popular database program, not least because it works the same on either Windows or Mac machines. It’s powerful enough to manage a substantial business or a small country.

It is full-featured and relatively easy to use. But, like any large program, there are complexities and depths that few users ever plumb. Manuals that come with large programs are usually of little help, which is why O’Reilly Press started its “Missing Manual” series. Each chapter in this book contains an example of a database designed for a particular purpose and then a tutorial on how to build it. (Does Lichtenstein know about this?)

Out favorite database, Alpha Five, is just out in Version 8. It has been our favorite for many years because it’s easy to use and at least as powerful as the offerings from Microsoft and others. One of the strengths we like is the ability to define rules for data entry that prevent people from typing in absurd or contradictory information and warn them they are about to enter something that doesn’t seem to fit the data. The database can reside on a desktop computer or the Web.

New features include faster creation of custom databases, color gradients for a pro look and security zones. You can create different security levels for access to either the whole database or parts. These levels can be accessed through codes that are meant just for individuals or for groups.

The program lists for $199 in its most basic configuration, and you can get more info at the Web site:AlphaFive.com. No programming skills required.

2. Travelistic.com lets you explore the world through short travel videos. Most are supplied by advertisers and tourist bureaus and have little feel of what the place is really like. But a few are created by individuals who actually know the area. We really liked the ones by a young woman who shows you a bit of what Newport Beach and Palm Desert, Calif., look like. She was as charming as the Travel Channel’s popular Samantha Brown.