Those of us reviewing products know that readers aren’t just looking to our reviews for advice. You’re digging through the user forums, too. Usually, we don’t get to talk to each other, readers and writers. Harmony Central is trying a new experimental format that does just that, with one of the hottest releases of the summer:
Pro Review: Ableton Live 5 [Harmony Central]
They certainly got one of the best writers around, the legendary Craig Anderton. As the forum format, well, it comes out about as you’d expect. It’s hard to read, since it’s just Harmony Central’s normal forum, and comments mean the result is six pages of screenful after screenful without any structure . . . well, you know, a forum. But unlike most forums, this one has Craig Anderton, meaning there’s tons of useful information in there.
Bottom line: if you like to read forums, you’ll love this. If you hate to read forums, check out Craig’s excellent written reviews — and you can bet the next one will be informed, if even in subtle ways, by the chance to interract with readers while the review is in process. It’d be great if we all got to post our review drafts in this way and beta-test them. Er, except that it’s more work, so, uh, can we be paid more, too?
Whether you’re reviewing this review or reviewing Live 5, let us know what you think — hit comments.