I have two suggestions. Please add my vote for this feature.
Firstly, having pollable information on the website that others could use on their sites would be very, very useful. There's 12 city servers, but the boxes like the top of http://sims.stratics.com/ would be helpful. I know over at Stratics Second Life its something we could use.
Secondly, as you have to be online to play SL, why not have, when you get to the login page, a box there that pulls the same information from the website that shows you the current status (Online, Offline, restricted login) to save going through the hassle of trying to log in - and bogging the servers - during busy times. After all, if your client can't access the web to get that few bytes of information, then you aren't going to be able to log in and play.
Lewis