Countdown Timer Image GIF in Email

While maybe gifsockets would work (I haven't tried that before...), there is no network traffic while I am looking at the image other than the initial image load. I am also seeing it it jump from 41 to 42 again. A Reload took it down to 39.

It appears to be just a script that generates 60 frames of animation and sends them to the user. This could probably be done in any language.

Here is how it is done in php:

http://seanja.com/secret/countdown/

I found http://sendtric.com/ which is free and very easy to integrate.