Lifehacker runs such articles somewhat regularly, I think. I don't read that site often, mostly when I come across such a tool published on it, that I get to hear about on some other site. But I've found some of the posts there to be good.

Interestingly, IIRC, Gina Trapani, who I think was/is an editor or writer there, had herself written a utility for to-do lists called todo.txt or some such name. It was supposed to be lightweight and only need and use text files, so could be used almost anywhere.

I don't know, it took me a while to find all of these. If you have android, i'd recommend tasker, or automator for mac. Both can automate pretty simple tasks.

Btw, in the comment section of the post, people are posting really good tools to automate things. :)