FileMaker has just released the latest version of FileMaker Pro. With this new release, FileMaker dives deeper to make it easier to create portable device layouts for FileMaker Go, and now provides FileMaker Go for free. They also realize that not every database creator is a viable designer, and now provide a number of ways to help in that regard. In addition, there are new chart types and enhanced container fields, and you now have the ability to create layouts to make them accessible to screen readers. In the grand scheme, there is a lot more to FileMaker than just a pretty face, but in this release, the developers focused on helping you create a pretty face. And, as usual, there's a lot more there.

Photoshop didn't really have an update with the 5.5 build other than some bug fixing. That's why when some of the Adobe applications show CS5.5, PS showed CS5.1. That means that they've had a whole two years to develop CS6, and it shows. When CS5 showed up, the public was warned that a lot of developing time went into making PS 64 bit, not that the focus on 64 bit seemed to have slowed down their creativeness in that build. With CS6, we get some expanded filters, improved painting tools, enhanced content aware fill capabilities, a whole new way to deal with the distortion of wide angle lenses, and new video features that may make Premiere Pro look unnecessary for small projects.

MathMagic Personal Edition is a stand-alone equation editor designed to be suitable for for users ranging from novices, students, teachers, higher education, and to high-end desktop publishers. If you're looking for a Mac equation editor, you really can't go wrong downloading a free trial copy to check out

Every Mac user, experienced or veteran, will almost certainly have on occasion deleted a file by accident or due to absent-mindedness. Data Recovery Guru lets you locate and 'unerase' seemingly deleted files, and the app's friendly GUI designed to be uncomplicated and easy to use makes data recovery 'non-technical.'

The CS5.5 Suites provide an opportunity for Adobe to keep some of their products current with the latest technology in the ever-sprinting technological race we live in. New features within Dreamweaver make it significantly easier to design for mobile, tablet, and monitor sized websites all at the same time, using the same content. It wasn't that long ago when "state of the art: websites had developers creating one website for desktops and a completely different site for phones. Now that tablets are becoming part of the digital landscape, developing is getting more complicated, but the updates to Dreamweaver significantly ease the burden. New features in InDesign make it much easier to export your interactive content for both tablets and for standard EPUB. And interactions between Premiere Pro and Media Encoder let you cue up multiple output to a variety of screen sizes. And while the encoding is taking place, you can continue working in Premiere Pro. These are a few of the examples that lead Adobe to provide a nick name for this round of Suites as the "CS5.5 & Any Screen."

The Fuse Antibacterial Screen Guard combines antibacterial properties of microscopic silver particles it’s impregnated with and physical screen protection against dirt and abrasion. I liked this product even more than I had expected to

Bento, the Japanese meal of databases, is back with a new release. Bento 4 brings new printing options (most notably Label printing in addition to printing options that use less ink), new fields such as "Location," the ability to store sound files from mobile media, and a Simple List field that provides a small scale spreadsheet within a record. While not as powerful as FileMaker, Bento is significantly easier to use and, more importantly, is dirt simple when it comes to creating a new databases from scratch. Bento 4 continues to add features and power and still maintains its ease of use and development.

Ever since the Mac had a CD tray, it could burn CDs all by itself and didn't require anything else to do that. Around the same time, Toast was there to help you do it better. Now, years later, nothing has really changed: your Mac can still burn CDs and DVDs, and Toast 11 can burn either of them (as well as Blu-ray disks) and do a lot more, and it still does a better job of the basic function: burning disks. It's pretty straightforward, but if you want subtleties, that's harder to do, and that's where Toast can help. And, if you want to enhance your video's sound, Toast now provides an amazing range of options. I have to add that while there are a number of significant improvements, I also find that at least one change provided a bit of a step backwards in user assistance.

It was only back in November when I first wrote about FileMaker Go for iPad and iPhone. Now, less than a half-year later, we have a big new release, free for current owners of FM Go. Funny thing about apps is that just a minor update in numbers—1.1 to 1.2—and it's a whole new ball game. Some of the limitations about FM Go came from limitations in the iOS; specifically, printing. But now that iOS allows you to print to wireless printers, FM Go can as well. FM Go now supports sliding fields andcharts, and now one can capture signatures in the database. But there's more...

Pairing the range of features and capabilities of any application down to a core feature set is a challenge. To make that application easier to use is a separate challenge in itself. Adobe does a great job in shrinking one of these two applications down to size so that the hobbyist can take advantage of what the parent applications have to offer. This release of Elements 9 brings two new applications to the Mac market: Premier (the video application) and Organizer (the content explorer application). Both of these two are not new and are both well seasoned applications. What's new is that they are now available for the Mac. I find Photoshop Elements both powerful and easy to use, Premier Elements is very powerful and a great step up from iMovie, but with a very steep learning curve. If you are used to using Bridge, Organizer is a bit frustrating, but it has a lot of to offer, just in different ways.

The word for the day is "ribbons." Moving from the floating Formatting Palette, Microsoft has now joined the Mac version of Office to the PC version, and we have ribbons! Also part of this transition is bringing the email client Outlook to the Mac and eliminating Entourage. Sometimes ribbons work and sometimes they do not; it depends on the application and how they are implemented. They are not the best thing in software applications and are certainly not the worst. Meanwhile I'm finding Outlook to be a major step backwards. Like any big release, there are some excellent new features and some improvements on older features. Similarly, there are some new features that one has to be wondering what they thought they were doing. Nonetheless, the new Office for Mac 2011 has been released and it's time to explore what we have.

These two DVDs, available from Photoshop Café, both have great, insightful information for the beginner or advanced photographer. Both videos (by Tim Cooper) are presented with bullets, text and many sample images. Tim is excellent in that he talks to you as a friend, explaining the nuances of photography. His voice is direct and calm, and it sounds like he wants to help you become a better photographer, not show off what he knows. All in all, these are informative and a pleasure to work with.