[cd34]

it does ping when it goes live.

Basically the way it works is

surfer hits the site, it checks to see if there is a new post, if so, displays it and schedules a 'task' in their cron. At the end of the post display phase, it runs a get on wp-cron.php which does the ping and any notifications to sites linked.

Now, the dilemma here is that the first person to hit after a scheduled post to be displayed may see a 2-3 second 'lag' on the display, followed by a page that doesn't finish loading at the end.

For SEO purposes, it is as if you made the post right as it went live.