How to implement a desktop ticker?

I would like to implement a desktop base开发者_JS百科d ticker. The ticker would display number of users that have signed up for a product on a related PHP website. This data is stored in a MySQL database. The ticker gets updated every time a new user signs up. This would be easy to implement if it was web based, can you suggest me the best way to implement this as a desktop standalone application(Rules out Yahoo widgets and Windows sidebar or Google widgets).

So far I have considered implementing using Adobe air as it brings web skills to desktop application and gives a nice look & feel to the application.

Thanks

Make a widget with JavaScript (jQuery) and let it fetch data every 1 min via AJAX from your PHP (maybe Zend or Yii) application.

If I understand you correctly, you just want a simple desktop application with just one purpose: "Display data that gets regularly updated". For this task you can use almost any language you want - to achieve platform independence, you can use java, .net (with mono) or any scripting language (even php).

There is no language that suits this simple task best, so just pick one you know (or one you want to learn).

I would use Java, but that's maybe because I have no background in creating platform independent C-code.

Maybe you could describe your idea in more detail, that might narrow it down.