It can be pretty annoying if you want to visit a website and you can’t access it for some reason, especially when it’s hard to know whether it’s just your fault, or whether the site is down for everyone out there. That’s why there’s a few services available which offer to help you find out the truth behind the problem, but now there’s a rather cool newcomer on the scene.

Currently Down is the latest of these tools, but it goes a whole heap further than the usual sites, in that it gives you much much more data to view. Not only does the service let you see whether the site is down or not, but it also delivers information on its performance, i.e. how fast is it loading, as well as managing a history of the site over time.

The other cool thing is the free service also monitors all the large sites automatically, and keeps a tracking history of when they stop working, which is actually a rather fascinating read. Who would have thought that even the biggest sites on the Web go down with such regularity? The BBC was down for 2 hours on the 19th July? Really?

The Currently Down service even grabs a relevant Error 500 screengrab where possible, to offer a reason why the site is not available at any time. A really nice touch.This is a definite bookmark for those who like to know what’s going on, and for those who just want to make sure their own Internet link is fine when a site becomes unavailable. Very nice!