Triplesourced

Yep - we missed a trick. While we, and everyone else in the tech press, was busy pulling apart the iPhone to see what made it tick - we didn't actuall y stop to think about whether Steve Jobs had lived up to his commitment to improve Apple's approach to the environment.

Greenpeace on the other hand, don't seem to have bought into the famous Jobs reality distortion field. No doubt Apple fans will argue that, any product subject to this much scrutiny will have flaws - which is true - but Apple claim to be striving to be different - and being absolutely whiter than white - when it comes to recycling and the environment should be part of that surely.

Grreenpeace write:

In May, after thousands of you had participated in our Green my Apple campaign,Steve Jobs the boss of Apple claimed: "Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors" on environmental issues.

We watched closely when the iPhone was launched in June for any mention of the green features of the phone from Apple. There was none.

So we bought a new iPhone in June and sent it our research laboratories in the UK. Analysis revealed that the iPhone contains toxic brominated compounds (indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVC. The findings are detailed in the report, "Missed call: the iPhone's hazardous chemicals"

You can find the whole report here - together with some funky YouTube videos:

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/iphone-s-hazardous-chemicals

Yesterday's meeting with Sellaband - which also included Sharon Osbourne's brother David Arden (who also represented James Brown) - threw up some interesting issues about how the Internet has turned the music industry back into a cottage industry - via the long tail issue. Being able to sell music, gigs and merchandise directly to fans - artists no longer face the sign to a label or sing in pubs and do a day job dilemma they may have faced in the past.

You might not "make it" but artists can feasible make a living selling their music and related merchandise full time - however while this is the theory I am not sure how this stands up in practice - and if is accurate we should have seen an accompanying rise in the absolute numbers of self-sustaining artists out there in the last five years or so.

Has the internet changed what it means to be an recording artist - the make it big or sink into obscurity proposition may have been replaced by a middle-way.

Just as Britney Spears has become the tabloids' whipping-boy (girl?) as she lurches from one pop-diva disaster to another, predicting the imminent and hopefully painful death of the music industry has become a favourite past-time of business publications – of which ZDNet.co.uk is no exception.

Anyone who loves technology and the internet specifically also hates what the internet hates and what the internet hates more than anything – is a middle man. And by god you have to hate them when you read stories about the Minnesota women who was fined $220,000 for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. (Note to record company executives – when you are old and infirmed this is not the best way to go if you don't want to be left out in the snow.)

The fact that Radiohead are opting to let punters choose how much to buy their album for online has been touted as the death-knell for established distribution channels – and I have to admit to getting caught up in the hype too. However, I have since found out that Radiohead are going to release the album on CD through established channels next year, and are offering a gift-box – containing vinyl of all things, to go alongside the pay-as-much-as-you-like download option tomorrow.

Unfortunately – despite the hype around Radiohead – the walls of the music industry aren't going to fall any time soon – not so long as as there are millions of people who still want to buy bland music from ASDA (or WalMart if you're a bland American)– and there are still a lot of people who like to do that.

What prompted all this muso musing was being taken along to a round-table event this afternoon run by Sellaband.com (at the curiously named Hospital in Covent Garden – showing my ignorance here cos there were no doctors or nurses or beds – just lots of new media types on MacBooks – but guess the building was something health related in its past). The site claims to be trying to use the internet – and social networking - to disrupt the traditional A&R process. Instead of A&R men trawling around gigs – looking for the next big thing – bands can sign up to the site for free and then encourage “Believers” or fans to invest in them in buy buying $10 chunks. Once the band has $50,000 worth of believer money – they get to make an album – the profits of which are then split between the believers, the artist and Sellaband. Now there are all sorts of financial details here of which I don't have the time or expertise to go into.

However on the plus side it generally seems like a innovative approach to making and distributing music – and one of the Sellaband artists, Mark Maclaine from Second Person, was certainly keen to promote it to the journalists present (but then he would) – and extol the benefits of having a group of 75 believers pushing his band and even organising concerts in Paris.

But while Sellaband appears disruptive, and dangerous to the record companies on some levels – effectively all it is really doing at one level is helping to reduce the costs to record companies of the A&R process. It still felt like the end goal of Second Person and the other artists on Sellaband was to get signed by one of the big record companies and get the record contract that has been the standard way for artists to “make it” for years. I may be wrong – and I haven't explored Sellaband's business model thoroughly enough – but there doesn't seem to be a long term strategy mapped out for how the artists can operate outside of the traditional music business in the long term. I guess knowing that you have Sellaband believers behind you and a certain amount of success puts artists in a better bargaining position – and there is a lot to be said for that.

However, Sellaband still hangs onto the band's master tapes for a year and I was still struck that Mark from Second Person was still essentially a young – and relatively inexperienced guy – having to do a deal with experienced middle men – in this case Sellaband – who's board consists of lots of ex- big label executives. The model isn't quite the internet ideal of the artist being able to deal directly with the public – with no hoops to jump through or middle-men to pay – but maybe we're not quite ready for that yet. We still need the reassurance of the crafted marketing and PR that a big label can provide.

Yep, it is true - we are indeed the champions! Last night ZDNet.co.uk was voted best business website of the year by the Association of Online Publishers (AOP).

The judges were won over by our approach to "Web 2.0" - which is great considering how much work we have put into creating the community elements of the new site. But the community isn't anything without readers who want to take part in it - so at the risk of being cheesey - the award is also for all of you - so thanks!

Well, that's the message from the head of Europe for speech recognition specialists Nuance. Steve Miller, who kicked off a day of get to know you sessions for press, analysts and customers with claims that:

“In Europe, the percentage of speech recognition as an interface is about one fifth of what it is in the states.”

You'll probably know the company's products more than the company itself - the brand is not exactly out there but then again – neither is voice recognition. The company's flagship product Dragon Naturally Speaking, only has a very small Nuance logo on the back (I know because they gave me a copy today but it won't sway my judgement) so don't kick yourself if you have not heard of them.

Nuance acquired the Dragon-Computing-created product about six years ago but claim it has done a lot of its own development work to improve the dictation software and are on version nine now. I am going to have a play with it over the next few weeks and see how usable it really is. The message coming out of Miller, who only joined Nuance a few months ago appears to be that they really haven't done enough to show-off the potential of the technology – and he even admitted that he didn't really associate himself with it but put that down to some poor marketing in the past which the company is trying to get right now.

To entice customers and the press over to the get to know you event – it was all held in the Mercedes World centre, Brooklands – which is the site of the world's very first purpose build race track in 1907. The theme of the day was predictably automotive and Nuance chose to show off how its speech technology is being integrated into mobiles (the marketing men kept banging on about speech enabled mobiles being just around the corner which is odd as when I last looked that is what they were invented for but I digress) so that you can send texts and emails by simply speaking – handy for salesmen who want to do ninety down the M1 while simultaneously closing a deal with Hong Kong.

Some of this stuff looks useful – we should definitely be using speech more as a way to interact with technology such as opening windows, finding applications – just to cut down on all the button pressing and rubbish menus we have to deal with. However I am not as convinced that many people are going to want to dictate emails to their phone – apart from maybe in the car which is about the only place you won't feel like a prize twit.

The other area of growth is call centres and a nice lady from Vodafone was on hand to expound the brilliance of their virtual new assistant which was absolutely and definitely not about call avoidance – oh no – not at all – none of that at Vodafone. Rather its all about “call steering” hmmm. Anyway, Vodafone has gone to all the trouble of creating a virtual personality for their automated call centre service – she is called Vicki, she is 30-35, and her favourite film is Bridget Jones Diary – so presumably she is also overweight, neurotic and a functional alcoholic. Vodafone customers can look forward to interacting with Vicki (or is it Vicky?) in the next couple of months – when Vodafone will be deploying her to help with call avoidance, oops sorry, I mean call steering.

We've put together a package of video of the Nuance stuff in action including some of the car demos – and a terrifying trip around the Mercedes test-track including some high-speed skidding action – which we'll post in the next week. Stay tuned.