I've found a couple of good links recently for automating tasks....

• isup.me: Great little site for checking if a web server is up or not... you can even create bookmarks like www.isup.me/http://news.bbc.co.uk which will take you straight to the result.
• icanhazip.com: This site simply responds with a plain text answer of your IP address, nice for checking if NAT and proxies are working like they should.