So, you've found a cool person on Twitter. You've clicked the 'follow' button. You wait, feverishly crouched over your computer, anticipating a follow back confirmation email. It doesn't arrive. You go to bed wondering where that email is. It's still not there when you wake up. You wail "Why? Why? Why?". Well, here are a few tips for avoiding the virtual cold shoulder.

Talk to them. Send the person you've just followed an @reply message. Maybe just introduce yourself, or respond to one of their tweets. It shows that you're not a spamming twitter bot.

Avatar. Make the effort to upload an avatar to your account, preferably a photo of yourself. Avoid the stock image of a smiling businesswoman as used by many a spammer.

Bio. Add a short bio about yourself to your account. If you have a website or blog be sure to add the link.

Say something. Basic, but do remember to actually tweet. Joining Twitter then immediately following hundreds of people while only having tweeted a couple of times looks bad.

With the release of the new operating system iOS 4 from Apple, the iPhone and iPod now have multitasking and, along with that, notifications from applications running in the background. This post is to show how much more elegant, in my opinion anyway, the Android implementation is.

Android has the concept of a notification bar, which is at the top of the screen and is visible in all applications. When a new notification comes in, it is flashed up in the notification bar, so you can glance at it and decide what to do. Dragging the notification bar down shows a list of recent notifications, be they emails, text, tweets or whatever, and you can touch each one to open the associated application.

The Twitter API (Application Programming Interface), opens up the data and functionality of the social media behemoth to third party developers. The number of applications powered by it is huge; clients for mobile phones and computers such Tweetdeck, Seesmic and Twidroyd, online media posting sites like Posterous and TwitPic, stats mashups like TweetStats, blog commenting software with twitter integration such as IntenseDebate, online tools for power tweeters like Hootsuite, the list goes on.

The recent launch of Twitter's own @Anywhere interface to the API makes it even easier for site owners to twitterize their websites.

The Twitter API could just be the most significant piece of software development of the decade. Although twitter.com is still the most popular way of tweeting, if Twitter had been just a website, with no API, no extended reach, no innovative interfaces, would it have been as successful? I don't think so.

A favicon, in case you don't know, is the little logo that you see in the top left of your browser when you visit a website. Sixteen by sixteen pixels of miniture art. An exercise in corporate branding. A bit of fun. It can be all of those things and more. Well, here are some of my favourites:

I use Posterous for publishing photographs online. I like the easy posting by email, the maps for geotagged photos and the integration with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr etc. If, like me, you use ASP.NET for your website, here's a little function to get the lastest photos from your Posterous feed.

I've had my HTC Desire on Vodafone for three months now, so I thought it was time for a report.

Overall:
First off, I must say that the Desire is an awesome phone. It's fast, reliable and easy to use. The overall build quality is excellent. I've been impressed with Android and the 'Sense' interface that HTC add to it. Calls are clear and signal is strong. Making calls and sending texts is a breeze. The Gmail integration and contact management is excellent. The camera is fast and the quality of photos is very good. Battery life is average for a smartphone, so it needs charging every night, but if charge zapping widgets are disabled then it can be extended.

The screen is bright, clear and responsive. The built in web browser works fine. I had qualms about moving to a full touchscreen only keyboard, but the spelling correction software works very well and inputting text is quick and easy on the Desire.

I recently bought a Dell Vostro laptop, which I'm very pleased with. A great bit of kit. While shopping around I was surprised to see the screen size and body casing of most laptops in high street shops, that is, a shiny body and a 15.6 inch widescreen screen.

The thing is, most people use laptops for web browsing, sending emails, uploading photos, creating documents, etc and the widescreen format just isn't the best for that. If you want to watch movies, then great, but I would think that would account for a fraction of the use of laptops. Also, why do the manufacturers insist in covering LCD displays with highly reflective 'enhancing' coatings and then surrounding them with shiny, eye-strain inducing, black plastic?

The Internet isn't easy to use, despite all the efforts of software companies to simplify it. The web is complicated by its very nature and using it can be fraught with problems. These problems can be highlighted when you're using an instant online messaging service such as Twitter. Make a mistake and hundreds of people will see it. Instantly. There wasn't a word or phrase for this phenomenon, so I've invented a new one. Yes, yes I have, you can't stop me. 'Twonk'. There, there it is, as defined below:

Twonk - noun. A mistake made in the usage of Twitter.

Here are some of the variations I've come up with:

Auto-twonk - noun. A tweet containing words incorrectly auto-suggested by a virtual keyboard.

Career-twonk - noun. An offensive tweet posted from the poster's employer's account.