In the land where parody accounts of celebrities brush shoulders with the insipid accounts of real celebrities literally getting paid to tweet, which is layered on top of millions of actually meaningful accounts, it probably isn’t a surprise to anyone that the United States is home to the most Twitter accounts with nearly 108 million accounts. While fathoming that amount is kind of a headache – seriously, that’s an average of roughly 1 account per 3 people in the United States – it only accounts for 28.1% of all Twitter accounts worldwide. Still, the growth of Twittering Americans doesn’t seem like it’ll slow down anytime since 5.6 million accounts were created in the United States in December 2011 alone.

Brazil and Japan are involved in an interesting contest for 2nd and 3rd place in the Twitterscape. Brazil has actually surpassed Japan in terms of the sheer quantity of user accounts but Japan still exhibits more Twitter activity than Brazil. Between September 2011 and December 2011, the study says, 30% of accounts in Japan posted a message whereas only 25% of accounts in Brazil posted a message. It’s all a matter of which metric you want to weight, but then again, it’s not like there’s a trophy for being #2 Twitter Country (not that there is for 1st place, either). Additionally, Japanese is still the 2nd most used language on Twitter after English.

While the United States might be the girthiest nation when it comes to Twitter accounts, they’re certainly not the most active (you like how that’s a metaphor for a lot of things related to the American lifestyle?). In fact, the distinction of most active Twittering country belongs to the Netherlands. One-third of all accounts located in the Netherlands posted at least one public message between September 1, 2011, and November 30, 2011. Japan and Spain follow in 2nd and 3rd place, respectively, while the U.S. places at 4th in activity. Still, even with the U.S. ranking as the 4th most active country on Twitter, that ranking would surely be lower if not for the sheer heft of accounts existing in the United States.

With so much drama in the Twitter lately, it’s a bit hard to anticipate how these figures will look this time in 2013. By then we’ll have a fuller understanding of how Twitter’s new policy of selectively withholding tweets (if and when they do) has affected users’ activity. Additionally, now that Twitter is expanding languages to be included in their Translation Center, such as Arabic and Farsi, it’ll be curious to see how those changes may affect the landscape of Twitter activity.

Anybody out there got any speculations you wanna bet on? See any changes on the horizon for how different parts of the world might use Twitter? Feel free to share below in the comments.

Torrent Freak is reporting that two large ISPs in the Netherlands, T-Mobile and KPN, are refusing to block access to The Pirate Bay after the Hollywood supported anti-piracy group BREIN demanded they restrict access. The ISPs said that blocking Web sites is a threat to the open Internet.

As you may or may not be aware, the Court of the Hague ruled that Ziggo and XS4ALL, the two largest ISPs in the Netherlands, have to block access to The Pirate Bay.

After the ruling, XS4ALL was quoted as saying they were disappointed that fundamental rights had been traded for “commercial interests.”

BREIN brought the case against those two ISPs, but they weren’t finished yet. They issued requests to other ISPs in the country to block access to the torrent site.

KPN and T-Mobile both made statements saying that they would not be honoring BREIN’s request. Torrent Freak says that this means millions of Internet users in the Netherlands can still access The Pirate Bay without the use of proxies.

They both spoke out against censorship and said that they would only block access following a court order. They told Hollywood that innovation is a better way to deal with piracy than straight out censorship.

KPN said that they don’t believe a blockade is the right solution, but “robust, attractive business models that are easy to use and offer a fair deal to both producers and consumers of content.”

T-Mobile made a similar statement saying that they will only respond to a court ruling, and not the demands from a “private party such as BREIN.”

BREIN is expected to bring the two ISPs to court over their refusal to block access to the site.

It makes you wonder if these anti-piracy groups even get that what they’re doing has no effect. We’ve seen it time and time again. You censor a Web site and users get around it with little to no effort.

You would think that Hollywood would finally learn to innovate and remain competitive instead of just suing everything that remotely threatens their business model from the 20th century.

Mueller explains that while the Galaxy Tab will continue being sold in the EU, the appeals court’s decision doesn’t lift the preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab that was granted to Apple back in August. That injunction, however, could be lifted as soon as next week.

In better words than I could possibly articulate, Mueller explains why this legal patent saga between Apple and Samsung has continued at an incremental pace throughout different parts of the world:

The two companies need the courts in various jurisdictions to clarify where Apple’s exclusive scope of protection ends and Samsung’s freedom to compete begins. There’s no mathematical formula based on which they could simply agree that Samsung’s products are allowed to have a degree of similarity of up to (for example) 70%. Instead, they need guidance from judges.

It’s amazing how after knowing and following this court drama for this long, only now has someone described the dispute with perfectly concise and illustrative words.

The Google Merchant Center is in large part what makes Google Product Search work; it’s a site that allows businesses to submit data product feeds, ensuring that users see up to date information.

This led Kirill Kounik, a product manager responsible for the Google Merchant Center, to recommend in a blog post, "If you’re a new merchant and would like to start submitting your products to Google for Spain, Italy, or the Netherlands, we recommend checking out the ‘Getting Started’ articles in our Help Center, and then reviewing the data feed instructions and requirements for your target country.  Existing Merchant Center users now have the option to select Spain, Italy and the Netherlands from the target country drop-down menu when registering their feeds in the Merchant Center."

Kounik also noted, "As we launch in new locations, we want it to be easy for you to make your products accessible to customers around the world.  Our data requirements differ by country, so you can now view the data feed specifications for all countries in your native language by using the drop-down box on the top of the Data Feed Specification help article."

These may be significant steps for Google.  Google Product Search isn’t something the average person uses every day, but together with offerings related to maps, news, and financial info, the tool helps make the company’s brand more appealing.

Don’t be surprised if Google’s global market share increases as a result.

The idea was to compare the effectiveness of search against other media as well as look at the interaction of search with those other media. They measured the impact of Heineken’s "Jouw Heineken" campaign, which led consumers to jouwheineken.nl, where they could design custom beer bottles for purchase. In addition to search, they used TV, online display ads, and YouTube.

Here are the key findings that Google highlights from the study:

- A Search impression alone creates 23% more brand preference for Heineken than the whole Heineken campaign without search. A search click creates 69% more brand preference.

- The fact that search was able to affect a brand metric like brand preference shows the ability for search to move consumers further into the purchase funnel, beyond just awareness.

- The addition of Search to TV increased overall brand effect by 1.5 times, illustrating the synergistic effects of Search and TV.

- Search proved to be 53% more cost efficient than TV in creating Top of Mind Awareness.

- The eye-tracking heat map portion of the study concluded that the 1st search result on the left side captures and retains the most attention.

- Frequency testing showed that three impression contacts were 39% better than one at moving brand preference.

Last week, Google shared some findings from a separate test that it ran with Levi’s. The conclusions drawn were similar. The companies found that paid search ads raised consumer awareness of the Levi’s brand, regardless of whether or not they were clicked.
 

Related Articles:

> Google Says Search Ads Boost Brand Awareness

> Google Gives Advertisers More Tracking Options

> More "Ads by Google" Across the Web

The UK move, in particular, is an important one for Google.  Camera cars have been photographing the region for a long time, but local privacy advocates objected to the idea of technology that might wind up being a burglar’s tool.  The release of these images (with face- and license plate-blurring filters running full power, of course) seems to indicate that Google feels safe from lawsuits.

 

So Street View users can now check out Big Ben, the spot at which the Beatles skipped across Abbey Road, or any number of sights in Aberdeen, Belfast, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, and York (for starters).  Plus Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

And let’s not forget Cannes, the Amalfi Coast, and Zaragoza, too.

If you need a little help to get started exploring, Googler Kenzo Fong Hing wrote on the LatLong Blog, "With some help from our friends at fancyapint.com I can use Street View to find the best watering holes in London, and the Tate museum helps me get a better sense of British culture by showing how the world has changed since the likes of J.W. Turner were painting back in the 18th century.  Other partners such as the Mayor of London show the highlights of the city, VisitBritain shows me where to go in the United Kingdom, and the Dutch tourist organisation VVV shows me what’s what in Holland."

After tracing edits back to the CIA, the FBI, and even a rather bizarre one about the IRA made from inside the Vatican (conspiracy theorists unite!), the latest to get busted are Prince Johan Friso of the Netherlands and his wife, Princess Mabel.

Mabel? Really? Not something hipper like Gertrude or Bessie?

Ahem.

According to Reuters Mabel had a thing for "drug barons" before she hooked up with the prince, who renounced the throne to marry her. Now, it is Amsterdam, so for all I know, "drug baron," could be the owner of a chain of "coffee shops" or the CEO of a pharmaceutical company.

Whatever he was, he was shot outside of an Amsterdam hotel.

It was a small edit, changing the claim that Mabel provided "incomplete and false information" about her relationship with the drug baron to "incomplete information."

After all, nobody likes being called a liar.

It also highlights an inherent problem with open, collaborative editing: where there is personal incentive to edit, there will be editing, just as sure as eating follows hunger.

Tools like Wiki Scanner are good, then, for keeping the larger establishment accountable, but do little for the smaller varmints – and we wouldn’t want it to operate on a smaller scale, would we? It wouldn’t be protecting the voice of the people anymore then, but a flagrant violation of privacy.

Um. Is it time to slow down yet?  

Perhaps Microsoft, seeing that the whole MSNBC thing didn’t work out, and that they are barely anymore involved with that network, are developing a new social news site to replace their link to MSNBC.msn.com? Either way, they are only one of many companies using the Digg concept, including Yahoo, who is using a Digg clone to power a user suggestion website. In Yahoo’s case a Digg clone wouldn’t have even been necessary if Digg had provided an API, something sorely missing from that site.

Oh, and apparently it’s pretty easy to spam.

Lots of other stuff:

The Windows Live Maps Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget is now available for download. Go read my review from two weeks ago.

Other Gadgets: The Gadget Guy site has released their own Gadget, a full-featured, well-designed and customizable one. Definitely worth checking out. Universal Music has released a Windows Media Player Gadget that controls your player and brings music news, upcoming events, and music videos.

Microsoft picked up analyst Michael Gartenberg as an Enthusiast Evangelist. Michael’s such a brilliant and multi-talented guy, only good things are expected.

Somebody wrote a Bittorrent client for Windows Vista Media Center. It uses a Wish List, so you can specify a movie, and when it becomes available, it gets downloaded. There’s also a Sidebar Gadget that lets you schedule recordings for Media Center, as well as browse the Program Guide, even from a different computer.

The winner of the Vanishing Point game was revealed as William Temple of Sacramento, California. William gets all this:

The grand prize package includes a Windows Vista-based, AMD-powered Dell desktop PC; a 24-inch widescreen monitor; a Zune™ digital media player; an Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system; three Games for Windows® game titles; a Microsoft® LifeCam VX-6000 webcam; Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007; and $50,000 cash.

Plus, the real big prize: a trip into space via Rocketplane XP. Solving all those puzzles and watching those weird videos will sent this guy 330,000 miles up above the Earth.

Neowin has some screenshots of Beta 2 of Windows Home Server.

Some reversals at Windows Live: Windows Live Shopping is renamed back to MSN Shopping, and Windows Live Wifi is now MSN Wifi Center and the MSN Wifi Hotspot Locator. It’s not so much a lack of confidence in Windows Live, as it is Microsoft correcting some overbranding of Windows Live. Some things should have stayed MSN, and they’re fixing that. It seems like they’re making some big decisions regarding Windows Live, and I’m just hoping this means there’s more of a level head on branding.

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Allowing users to share and rate news on the site, it has a simple interface, much like the Digg of old. It also has Windows Live integration, with Alerts, add to Live.com and with a BlogIt! option sending posts straight to Windows Live Spaces.

The site has reportedly received 500,000 and 800,000 users visting the site in the 1st and 2nd months respectively. Articles have got up to 10,000 votes and 1,000 comments. The stats show that this is not a poor imitation of Digg though.

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Consumer protection czar Bjoern Erik Thon, or ombudsman, as its called in Norway, has demanded that Apple make its iTunes media download suite compatible with non-iPod mp3 players or face legal action. According to Thon the Norwegian government will impose fines on Apple if these requests are not met by October 1st of this year. Added Thon:

iTunes is imposing unreasonable and unbalanced restrictions that are not in accordance with Norwegian law.

Similarly, Netherlands consumer protection group Consumentenbond has requested that Dutch antitrust watchdog NMa investigate what were referred to as illegal practices in a formal complaint filing. The Netherlands has given Apple an identical timeline in which to comply.

What we want from Apple is that they remove the limitations that prevent you from playing a song you download from iTunes on any player other than an iPod, said Consumentenbondvan spokesman Ewald van Kouwen. When you buy a music CD it doesn’t play only on players made by Panasonic. People who download a song from iTunes shouldn’t be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives.

Norway was the first European country to take action against Apple’s iTunes dominance when it filed a formal complaint last June. Since then consumer agencies in Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany and Finland have made similar complaints, and have joined together to find resolution for the matter.

French consumer agency UFC-Que Choisir has been the most active in the fight against the iTunes monopoly. The lobbyist organization championed a law that forced Apple to license its software and hardware to French businesses, which was put into place last August.

And while each country has chosen to deal with the matter in its own way, the general attitudes toward Apple’s policies are largely the same. From a joint statement issued by governments from the aforementioned countries:

We believe consumers have a right to play material purchased online on a portable device of their own choice. Contract clauses that make this impossible or too inconvenient are unfair and should be revoked.

Read the Associated Press

Also read Reuters

Related Articles

Apple Settles iTunes Lawsuit
Wal-Mart Bullies Apple for iTunes Video Profits
iTunes Down Until Showtime, Movie Downloads Immiment
Amazon’s Unbox Video Download Service Rumored to Launch Today
Apple’s iTunes 7, iTV and the End of Showtime
Microsoft Opens Vista Kernel to Security Firms
Apple May Launch Movie Download Service Tomorrow
Apple’s iTunes Phone on Track for January
Steve Jobs Keynote – Showtime Live Coverage
Microsoft Announces Zune Phone Amid iPhone Rumors

*Originally published at TechFreep.com

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Mike Zazaian is the Editor-in-Chief and Webmaster of TechFreep.com, an online publication dedicated to daily technology and science news. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he majored in Film and Video studies with a sub-concentration in screenwriting. While only a minority of Mike’s formal education encompassed the technology field, he has worked as a web developer, a freelance web designer, and has been a tech enthusiast for the better part of his life.