As far as Pushlets are concerned, there is no reason they could not be implemented in any server side scripting language.

return result
}

function PrefixPadString(str, prefix, length)
{
while(str.length < length)
{
str = prefix + str
}

return str
}

function Queue()
{
var items = new Array();
var first = 0;
var count = 0;
this.Count = function()
{
return count
};

this.Peek = function(last)
{
var result = null;
if(count > 0)
{
if(null != last && true == last)
{
result = items[first + (count - 1)]
}
else
{
result = items[first]
}
}

return result
};

this.Enqueue = function(x)
{
items[first + count] = x;
count++;
return x
};

this.Dequeue = function()
{
var result = null;
if(count > 0)
{
result = items[first];
delete items[first];
first++;
count–
}

return result
}
}

http://www.pushlets.com/doc/whitepaper.html

(wouldn’t think micsrosoft is using java though, but maybe a similar technique)

trying making a flash app of this would be interesting….
nik

I can’t help but wonder how much easier it would’ve been to simply have that interface done in Flash in the first place.

Not sure how they push the data, frequent checks would sure put some serious strain on their servers and result in a lot of overhead. Its definitely an interesting piece of technology, I’d imagine they’ve looked at creating persistent connections to the backend.

nik