The GeoNames web service API, http://www.geonames.org/export/web-services.html, can be used to retrieve information on foreign countries such as postal code, city name, country code, longitude, and latitude. This information can come in very handy in variety of circumstances. I used the information obtained from the API to automate updating a table of countries with the postal code (just needed one in this instance) of every capital in the world.
First you will need to use cURL. I have written a simple cURL class: