Help understanding backlinks

Can somebody please help me.

In Google Webmasters it says I have 286 linking root domains, when I go to OSE it says I have 81 root domain links. Why is there such a huge difference?

Earlier this year I managed to get some great high PR links form a newspaper and some magazines. These links show in Google WM but not on OSE, why would this be? It has been more than 7 months since the link went live.

Different crawlers. You're always going to get discrepancies.

Would I be correct in saying there is a way to ping backlinks? To get them registered

yes, but doesn't mean they will show up. all the seo tools have different crawler types, and indexing methods. just keep doing what your doing and don't worry about things that you have no control over. Its google that your backlinks count in, no matter if they are in webmaster or not