How To Get Webpage To Return Value To Desktop Application Caller

I need to make an autoupdater for my application. This has been done, and it is working perfectly. However, my application currently downloads version.txt, and reads it to work out whether it needs to download the new application. This is hideous, and slow, and was only supposed to be very temporary. It is also very annoying that we have to update this file every time we release a new version.

My boss wants me to create a webpage that reads the version data from the uploaded .exe, and then returns that to the Desktop application. Therefore, I would be able to call www.example.com/version.aspx, and it would return the version number, such as 1.1. I could then compare to the current version (don't worry, it is generated on the fly, and not hard coded) and then I could download the application if required.

Here comes my question. How would I go about this? I have heard of CGI scripts, and asp.net. Which one of these has the power to solve my problem. If you could just tell me that, then I will be all sorted, as I could read up on it, learn, and broaden my knowledge.

If this is not possible, or not easily possible, is there any way of reading the file version of a remote .exe, without downloading it. This would also be preferable in many ways.

P.S. I did try to explain this to my boss, and suggested that maybe he could either do it, but he is not very good at web applications, and refused, saying that it would broaden my education in this matter.

EDIT: Somehow forgot to add: I normally program in C#, although this application should be so small, that it would not really matter. Also, C# code would be ideal, if there is a way to check the version of a file on a remote server.