TIP: Check if a web site is down + cool FireFox hack

I was having problems connecting to a web site and I managed to stumble into a web site via Google to check to see if a web site is really down or not (get a second opinion) and I found this site:

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/isitup.cgi

But even cooler than that, they had a tip for FireFox that allows you to bookmark that URL and assign a ‘keyword’ to it. I hadn’t seen this before, but apparently it’s an old feature in FireFox.

So now I can just type: ping www.yahoo.com

And it takes me to the computerhope link above and tells me whether it’s up or not. Sweet!