This is an enhancement issue based on the discussions about this question: http://answers.ros.org/question/48312/callback-function-for-advertise-is-not-called/

I followed the documentation for NodeHandle::advertise (http://www.ros.org/doc/fuerte/api/roscpp/html/classros_1_1NodeHandle.html#ae4711ef282892176ba145d02f8f45f8d) but it does not work on my machine (and I assume in general since I the standard C++ compiler from ROS Fuerte).

The documentation should have an explicit type cast:
handle.advertise<std_msgs::Empty>("my_topic", 1, (ros::SubscriberStatusCallback)connectCallback);