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150 Geeky Media People You Should Follow on Twitter By Matt Blum January 14, 2010  |  8:00 am  |  Categories: The Internet Image by Ken Denmead Whether you’ve been using Twitter since 2006, are determined never to use it unless dragged kicking and screaming, or are somewhere in between, you probably know that it’s wildly popular with all sorts of people. In addition to the celebrities who make a big deal about Twitter (e.g., Ashton Kutcher), there are tons of people, both famous and not, who tweet about lots of interesting things. We presented a list last May of 100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twitter. Today’s list, rather than solely consisting of geeks as the first one did, is composed of Twitter feeds of people and organizations associated with media that appeals to geeks. For your convenience, this list is also available on my Twitter account as @cerebus19/geekymedia. I plan to update the list on Twitter from time to time as I discover new Twitter accounts that are appropriate for it.

Journalists wanting to integrate Twitter into their newsgathering routine may be nervous about trusting random posts which claim to be relaying important information. Working with known contacts is one thing, but working with total strangers and trying to find out who to trust presents the journalist with a problem. Craig Kanalley, who runs Breaking Tweets, shares some tips about how he tries to assess who to follow and what's worth following up

The concept of a WebHook is simple. A WebHook is an HTTP callback: an HTTP POST that occurs when something happens; a simple event-notification via HTTP POST.

A web application implementing WebHooks will POST a message to a URL when certain things happen. When a web application enables users to register their own URLs, the users can then extend, customize, and integrate that application with their own custom extensions or even with other applications around the web. For the user, WebHooks are a way to receive valuable information when it happens, rather than continually polling for that data and receiving nothing valuable most of the time. WebHooks have enormous potential and are limited only by your imagination! (No, it can't wash the dishes. Yet.)

Push is the simplest of reasons to use WebHooks. As was just stated above, no more polling every couple of minutes to find out if there is new information. Just register a WebHook and receive the data at your doorstep as soon as it exists.