Often when you open an XML config file in a DTD/Schema aware editor, and you're connected to the internet, the editor will reach out over the net to fetch the DTD/XSD, which gives webmasters some interesting usage stats.

I've commented before on how you can use this technique to look at the big growth in DWR usage, but I noticed that you could also use it to suss out some JVM usage stats because when Eclipse etc come read the DTD they use the Java version number as their User Agent.

Anyway, the numbers:

Caveat - there are about a million reasons why this is un-scientific. It may be interesting to some though.

Aside: I wonder if Java should adopt the 'standard' formatting for the User Agent string that is employed by all major browsers?

The word Webinar may be one of the top-10 most hated words on the net (according to a bizarre and probably meaningless poll) but I'm not sure there is a better phrase that isn't either long or ambiguous*.

Anyway - I'm doing one.

The 'live screencast' is about DWR and TIBCO GI. It's a demo of creating a website with a rich set of widgets (courtesy of GI) and rich interactivity (courtesy of DWR).

I've spoken at a few conferences using the battleships demo, and felt that the game was interesting but not very real-world. This 'online conference' shows something that is very definitely real-world: a call center - but also one where there is some scope for innovation.

The 'broadcast talk' planned for next Wednesday, July 18, at:

• 10:00 am Pacific
• 1:00 pm Eastern
• 6:00 pm UK
• 7:00 pm Central European

It's organized by TIBCO and we'll be broadcasting using Webex, so you'll need to register.

* Wikipedia redirects Webinar to "Web Conference", but it's not a whole conference, just a seminar, and "Web Conference" makes me think of a physical conference on the web like TAE or TRWE rather than a conference that is broadcast using the web. Ho hum.