OK, as a public service to Blogdom, I've set up my Blogspot traffic signal. It's a script that runs in background on my server, and attempts an http access of blogspot.com once a minute. If it's successful, it gives the green signal. If not, you'll get the red traffic signal. (Note: I only run it on the main index page, so if you came here via a link to the specific post, you won't see it).

Next, I'm going to put the Mark of Blogspot on the blogspotties, so you'll know which links to not bother with when it's down.

Let me know if it works. It seems to be doing OK, so far. Blogspot's been down for while, and it just came back up, and the script seemed to pick it up.

I'm outraged!

This kind of pre-emptive blogcial profiling is not only blogcist, but it's ineffectual, too.

You'll have blog readers keeping an eye out for a sign of one problem -- diverting their attention away from problems other sites might be having.

Who's to say, for instance, that Greymatter won't go down (for instance, rumor has it that Tim McVeigh used Corner Host...)

P.S. Mind sharing that script...?

Heeeyyyy, it's proprietary! I've gotta pull in the hits somehow...

I've hit this site 3 times today because of your meter thingy.

Screw proprietary script. Give it out to everyone who wants it, but request that they call it the "Rand-o-meter" or the "Simberg Sentinel" or the "Transterrestrial Cyber-Spy" or some such thing.

Otherwise, people'll learn to write their own, and then you'll consistently have to remind the blogosphere that the original idea was yours (which wouldn't be very dignified, now would it?) ;-)

Or, charge a buck or something.

Good idea. Maybe I'll post it on a page that people can copy, but I need to clean up the comments first--I'd be kind of embarrassed for anyone to see the code in its current state.