One really useful program that replaces various things in MacOS X is Keyboard Maestro (http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/). It's a way of getting your keyboard to control more things on your system - from triggering abbreviations that expand into words or phrases, to starting or controlling other applications. These abbreviations can run shell scripts too. It's considerably better than Automator, I think.

I particularly like and use the web triggers (which let you access the KM engine using the built-in web server) and the iPhone app (free) which you can use to control your Mac from other locations. It makes a killer remote control too...