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Ever have that horrible feeling when you go to your site and it’s down? HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN LIKE THIS? HOW BAD IS IT?

I just had a problem with one of my client’s sites, at the exact second I was showing it to him. Ugh! I ran to the hosting site and opened a trouble ticket.

Turns out, it was just a problem from my connection. We checked it on Downforeveryoneorjustme.com. The site lets you enter a URL to check and gives you instant feedback about whether it’s officially down. Awesome free tool.

Down for everyone or just me?.

This tool is a little strange, but I can see how it may be handy if you need to track your home library or if you sell things on Half.com or the like. Of course, I know people who keep detailed catalogs of their personal libraries, so maybe this tool would be perfect for them.

BeepMyStuff.com lets you use a webcam to capture the barcodes from your DVDs, Blu-Ray Movies, CDs, Video Games and Books.

Homepage | BeepMyStuff.com.

The other day I wrote about a site that converts your email address into a graphic so spammers can’t sweep your site.

This tool, with the unfortunate name of scr.im, converts your email address into a simple URL, and people who want to write you have to pass a simple test to show they’re human. Kinda cool, pretty clever and, best of all, completely free.

scr.im « Share your email in a safe way. Get less spam.

Sometimes I like these Web 2.0 applications just because… well… they’re just so colorful and cool, just like when you splurged on the awesome chartreuse spiral notebook with the gel cover and extra pockets in middle school.

TextFlow is a document collaboration website. You drag and drop your document into their application, and then you drag other people’s versions. The changes and suggestions from everyone are color coordinated, and they slide out and bookmark themselves in cool ways.

As a professional writer, I’ve really never had much trouble integrating changes from multiple people into one document, so I wouldn’t really need TextFlow, but I’m a sucker for a pretty notebook.

TextFlow offers a fully functional personal edition for free (that includes a watermark “Not for Commercial Use”), or it’s $99 per user per year for the full edition.

Another cool thing…. great storytelling in their promo video.

TextFlow.