I think it's a great example of noticing a common problem that no one has solved (to my knowledge) and providing a solution that's damned obvious in retrospect. The domain might be too long to remember. Maybe something like downorjustme.com (available) would be better.
Oddly though, it says youtube.com is down (maybe that's your test case?).
I saw this the other day and thought it was pretty neat.
I'm a little unclear how it works. Does it actually attempt to load a page from the requested site or does it simply log the number of people asking about it and assume that something is down by the volume of requests?
If the 2nd one, I can see how it could be pretty flawed, easily gamed, and only usable with some serious critical mass. (It could also explain the YouTube thing if lots of people are using that to check it out).
I like these simple one-question-one-answer sites, though I never remember about them when I actually need a specific one. This one is the first Google hit for "down for everyone" though, so that should take care of the long domain name.
I wonder if it only pings from one location? (it probably doesn't account for "down for some people" dns problems).
Can somebody make a script for Firefox that automatically queries this site when the browser is unable to resolve a URL and then returns a dialog letting the user know if the site is truly down? That would be epic.
Wikipedia.org is down presently, and it is nice to know it is down for everyone and not just me. I hope they come back up soon, as I feel crippled by its absence.
the text field is a little too hard to notice in safari given the pre-entered text. i suggest adding a thicker border and using javascript to select it on pageload.
They special cased their own domain. I love attention to detail like that.