I've heard this a few times from RIA regulars:
"reviews@rateitall.com is great and all, but why do I need it when I can just post my reviews from the site?"
For regular users, this is a valid point. You usually don't need need to use reviews@rateitall.com unless you want to, although it is far and away the easiest way to post photos with your review, or to add new things to the site.
But here's a case study from my own experience of when the reviews@rateitall.com feature was really, really helpful.
I recently came back from a trip to Tokyo. It was a 12 hour flight, with no wifi. So what did I do? I opened up my laptop and drafted some reviews of each of the amazing things I saw on my trip, and attached photos to each one.
When I was back online, those emails went out and posted instantly.
I use RIA almost as a diary of the things (and my reactions to those things) that I come across during my life. Reviews@rateitall.com is a way to document and capture those moments, even without access to the Internet.
This theme of how to log a moment on RIA even during those times when you are not sitting at your desk with an Internet connection is something I find pretty interesting.
For some of my Tokyo reviews, see here, here, here, and here.
8/26/09
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I guess I never thought of it that way. I don't use any sort of email program like Outlook or Thunderbird; I read and write all email in a web browser.
ReplyDeleteI have however, written some reviews in Word so that I could then copy and paste them when I was able to get back online. Using reviews@rateitall and an email management program would bypass the Word process rather nicely.
lawrence's explanation is a sound one.
ReplyDeleteI run an ageing Nokia N80 and even with the best will and intentions (and Opera Mini) I can't barely get a few lines out of the screen before the pathetic scrolling capabilities render it unuseable.
An email reviews platform like this allows me to use a plain screen bereft of any web-related ornamentation to craft a review and mail.
So yeah - great for producing reviews offline, but just as important when it comes to working on less-than-perfect mobile devices which most non-iPhone users have to suffer.