Canada Leading Internet User

As promised, and in anticipation of Canada Day (July 1), today's Friday Feature is: "Read/Write Web". No, it isn't a Canadian site nor does it contain strictly Canadian content or viewpoint..."Why, then? What's the connection," you ask. "Ah, well, that will become apparent as you read on," the alien responds with a vague knowing smile. For now though, let's get on with why this site merits a Friday Feature mention: first it is an erudite and succinct collection of great tips on web writing, presentation and navigation. Like Ilker's Thinking Blogger site, Read/WriteWeb provides a well written and well researched location on a variety of topics related to the web and, because it receives a lot of traffic (also like Ilker's site), its comment page is often more illuminating than the original post.
I'll get back to this in a moment. Topics of late have included:

• Office Apps in the iPhone
• Facebook Acquisitions
• Spock-vertical search done right (no, not that Spock, Jean-Luc!)
• Web Predictions
• Top 100 alternative search engines

But the post that really caught my attention was the June 26th post, Top Web Apps in Canada (now you see the connection?). I found some of the statistics quite surprising and illuminating. Here are a few:

• Canadians use the Internet more than anyone in the world
• Canadians spend on average 39.6 hr/month on the Internet, followed by Israel at 37.6 hr/m and South Korea at 34, with USA in 8th position at 29.4 hr/m
• 70% of Canadian households have Internet access (apparently putting us at the top again)

Okay, here's the funny part. When I went to the comments section, I found this comment to attempt explanation for why Canada was the leader in Internet usage:
The Internet is probably so popular in Canada because it is a large, sparsely-populated relatively isolated country.

What? Seems people still think we live in igloos, eat blubber and wear funny hats...Canada IS a large country (it's the second largest country in the world by total area) and our population IS spread out. But we DO have cities and we do communicate within them...
Thanks to Ted Morris of ZiaNet for the cool Canadian chick pic.