Twitter is growing and evolving, and the service clearly wants plenty of new users to join its folds. However, try registering a new Twitter account, and come up with a username that isn’t already registered. You’ll soon find that there’s some serious username depletion going on.

Things wouldn’t be so bad if the person who had already taken your brilliantly though-out nickname was actually using that Twitter account. But take a look around and you’ll find lots of examples of users who clearly have just created a Twitter account, signed in once or twice, and then never used the service again. And since Twitter accounts never expire, that username is now gone for all time.

And it’s not a small problem. Twitter could have more than 100 million unused accounts. In January, Twitter reported that it had almost 200 million registered users, a number that has surely grown significantly since then. In September, Twitter reported that it had 100 million active users (users who sign in at least once a month). Quite a difference.

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How fast are Internet connections across the world? How fast are they in your country?

This article examines the real-world connection speeds for people in the top 50 countries on the Internet, i.e. the countries with the most Internet users.

This list of countries ranges from China at number 1 with 420 million Internet users, and Denmark at number 50 with 4.75 million Internet users.

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Yesterday, Apple announced that it will be launching an App Store for Mac OS X, modelled after the App Store for iPhone and iPad. It will be available 90 days from now and we believe it will be a game-changer for several reasons.

Why? Because it maps a very successful concept from the handheld world to the world of the personal computer (yes, the Mac is a PC…), and it translates very well.

Here is why it will be a success.

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Google Chrome is a great web browser. It has a super-fast Javascript engine, it renders pages with the standards-friendly Webkit, it’s minimalistic and easy to use. It’s also been developed at a breakneck pace, reaching version 6 (!) in little more than two years. With Chrome, Google has really pushed the envelope in terms of speed and stability.

But Chrome has one huge disadvantage compared to basically every other browser out there: Really, REALLY awkward bookmark handling. And this is completely unnecessary.

Let us explain… and propose a solution.

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It may be the start of a new trend, software that automatically upgrades itself silently in the background without ever bothering users. Google has been doing it successfully with its Chrome web browser, and soon Mozilla will jump on the bandwagon with Firefox.

You may love it or hate it, but for most users, software that automatically upgrades itself can be a blessing, and in more ways than is immediately apparent.

And it’s not just great for users, it’s great for developers because it allows them to innovate and develop at a fast pace, pushing out frequent updates without annoying their users with upgrade notices. In short, automatic upgrades let developers push the pace of innovation.

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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, you’ll know that last week Apple announced the iPad, its new tablet device. Reactions have been a mixed bag, and a storm of discussion has swept through the blogosphere about various features the iPad should or shouldn’t have had.

One of the main complaints so far has been the iPad’s lack of multitasking. (To be precise, multitasking is a bit of a misnomer here; the iPhone OS has multitasking. What people really mean is only allowing one app at a time to run.)

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Next year is going to be a big year for web browsers. In 2010, we’ll hopefully see Firefox 4, Internet Explorer 9, Safari 5, and possibly even Chrome 5. This new batch of browsers will include several new features that have the potential to entirely change the way we interact with the Web.

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Apple’s iPhone has been a massive success in the consumer smartphone sector. But can it mount a serious challenge to phones such as Research in Motion’s Blackberry in the business marketplace? It can, providing Apple is willing to make some changes.

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When it comes to keeping up with blogs and other websites, a common complaint is information overload. Even if you subscribe to receive site updates through an RSS reader, it’s easy to wind up with more items in your reader than you have time to actually read. You may still want to read some of those posts, but if you don’t want to read all of them, searching through your reader for the important news items can be almost as much of a burden as going from site to site.

Because of the ongoing concern of information overload, many people who previously relied on RSS have drifted away from it. However, RSS readers are evolving to solve these issues and improve their usefulness.

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We’re closing in on 500 articles here in our blog (this is number 498), and a fair share of these have been articles that are useful to webmasters (including bloggers). Therefore, here is a selection of our best and most useful articles written with webmasters in mind.

To help you out we have sorted the articles into groups. The index is at the top of the post.

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