my $page= get('$url') won't work. Even if $url was defined -- it's not -- it still wouldn't work. my $page= get("$url") would work, but you want plain old my $page= get($url).

I don't think or die("$!") works as you expect, since LWP::Simple::get doesn't set $! as far as I know. It will die as expected, however, which leads to the question: Why didn't you check for or mention error messages? This would have given you one.