It kind of sounds like a developer's dream: create an app in Cocoa that automatically works on Windows, too. But that's what Cocotron promises, and the folks at Ecamm say the dream is there, even if it requires a lot of elbow grease. They tried using Cocotron to port an app called FileMagnet, and two months after they started, they say they did it. You can see the results above, and as they say, "Visual Studio was never opened."

But of course it wasn't exactly one-click. They had to implement a number of Apple-specific methods, and there were UI bugs, strings support, and dreaded Vista compatibility to work out. But the good news is that Cocotron is all open source, and from what the Mac Daddies say, the devs working on the project are super helpful and supportive. So, not only is it getting better every day, but every bit of implementation that gets done is something that won't have to be repeated. Sounds like a lot of "fun" (for varying values of "fun" of course) for developers to be had here.

The lines between Mac and PC, no matter what the commercials say, are blurring more and more every day, and this could turn out to be a way to develop in an environment as welcoming as Cocoa, and then bring programs back into an environment as widespread as Windows.

Remember iPhone Drive? And MegaPhone? Well, Ecamm's pretty sure they're (finally) not going to get sued with their newly renamed "PhoneView." Along with the new name for the iPhone/iPod touch data access tool, PhoneView delivers an overall software refresh.

You can now add and edit notes without rebooting after each change -- wait until you're done and tap "Apply Changes" for a single reboot instead. There's also undo/redo support for the notes editor. There's a new search feature for music, contacts, SMS, etc.

Read on for more details.

It's always seemed to me that the image that comes from the built-in camera on my MacBook Pro should be more adjustable. We've previously mentioned iGlasses, a webcam utility (from the makers of the handy Call Recorder for Skype) which provides all of those missing controls. The utility recently updated to version 2.1, and adds a zoom button, stability improvements and compatibility with more applications.

iGlasses 2.1 lets you control color, exposure, zooming and cropping of your iSight (or one of several other webcams). It also provides several color adjustment "effects", if you're into that, and it's AppleScript-able so you can automate settings. Personally, I'm mostly interested in zooming and controlling lighting/color settings, which it handles quite well. Once the free, 7-day demo is installed, the adjustment palette shows up in most applications that use the iSight: iChat, Skype, Skitch, Pixelmator, Photo Booth and about 60 others.

iGlasses will set you back $9.95 and a free demo is available. The demo can be easily uninstalled by running the installer and clicking the "Uninstall" button.

Mac and iPhone/iPod developer Ecamm has just released a major upgrade to their iPhone Drive utility. iPhone Drive allows you to access the user data on your iPhone or iPod touch, both read and write. With it, you can copy files to and from the user partition. So if you need to bring some important files along with you, this utility turns your iPod or iPhone into a portable drive. What it doesn't do is this: It does not create a general-use USB device. You need iPhone Drive on both ends--to put data onto your system and to take it off.

The new 1.4 version provides four major upgrades: you can play any song from your onboard music library directly from the utility, you can access your SMS message archive and call history, and you can view the photos you've snapped using your onboard camera. Obviously these last three options are limited to iPhones only but despite the name, the software works with both iPhones and iPod touches.

These upgrades join iPhone Drive's existing feature repertoire that includes file I/O and read-only access to your music, ringtones, podcasts, audio books and notes. The 1.4 upgrade is free to users who registered versions 1.3 and earlier and $19.95 for new users.

The gentlemen at ecamm networks have a slew of products already in production: iGlasses, Call Recorder, and plenty more. Watch the video for demos of iLidz, iPhone Disk, and an unreleased video hack for the iPhone that's got to be seen to be believed. Video moved into the continuation for faster home page loading.

Mac developer Ecamm has posted a sneak peak of iPhoneCam, an application that uses your iPhone's camera as a wireless Mac webcam. You can stream video from your iPhone over its WiFi to any Mac video application, including iChat, Photo Booth, or Skype.

I have participated in one iPhone chat and while it's not exactly the most comfortable way to use a webcam, you've got to admit using an iPhone is way up there on the cool quotient. You can watch a demo video here.

TUAW reader Tommy E. writes: A while back I installed Make it Mine and entered my custom carrier logo as "ROBOTS" -- when springboard restarted, nothing happened to my carrier logo. Now, I just restored and updated to 1.1.2 (not jailbroken) and suddenly and surprisingly my carrier logo now reads "ROBOTS"! My problem is that I need to visit the Genius Bar because my headphone jack is wacky. Is there some way to get "AT&T" back up there?"

Fear not, Tommy. There's an easy fix for your problem. Ecamm's "Caption Crunch", which we discussed a while back can set or revert the time string. So today, I gave Glen of Ecamm an urgent "help our reader" IM. He responded by creating a custom version of their software that reverts the fake carrier logo created by MIM.

In case you didn't read that last paragraph fully. Let me re-iterate. Glen of Ecamm. Created. A. Custom. Application. Version. for our TUAW reader in need.

The software can be downloaded here. Make sure to send Ecamm a thank you note. And if you get a "No Carrier" message after setting the logo, just reboot.

Remember I wrote about that bunch of undocumented SpringBoard prefs? Ecamm has grabbed the bull by the horns (or possibly by the implanted iPod dock) and produced "Caption Crunch", a simple utility that adds a custom message to your iPhone using the fake time preferences.

Caption Crunch works by modding the com.apple.springboard.plist file that gets stored on your personal computer in the backup files and actually talks to your iPhone and convinces it to upload a new copy of the prefs file. The iPhone will perform a "pseudo restore" and may reboot. I tested on an iPod touch and it worked great.

Cool stuff indeed--but even cooler that Ecamm seems to have taken Mac/iPhone communication up to a new level. No Jailbreak necessary.

If you want to customize your iSight output for chatting or video recording, there's a quick and cheap way to do it: iGlasses from ecamm network, only $9.95 for a whole kit bag of adjustments, colorizations, exposure controls and pan/zoom options. The 2.0 version was released earlier today (a free upgrade for previous licensees) and adds exposure lock for the built-in iSight camera among other new features.

I find myself using the exposure control a lot to manage iChat video in poor lighting conditions; you can check it out for yourself by downloading the demo here.

Thanks Glen & Ken

The iPhone application community continues to amaze me-- this time, Engadget's got the heads up on an iPhone video conferencing system, made possible by not only a cool little piece of code (designed for a C4 contest) that fetches an iPhone's camera input and feeds it out to another iPhone via a webserver, but also these ingenious mirror settings that work as a little periscope around the phone, and let you both see the image on the front while the camera on the back grabs yours. Wild!

The Ecamm folks are old hands, apparently, at the ingenious use of mirrors around an Apple camera, but this definitely tops anything I've seen in the past. Just an amazing hack, both in terms of software and hardware. Unfortunately, the source (for either hack) isn't available yet, but they promise that something is coming soon. In the meantime, just bask in the glow of what these iPhone guys are capable of.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Yesterday, ecamm introduced iPhoneDrive, a utility that lets you use your iPhone disk to store arbitrary data files. I downloaded a copy and after a quick false start and a software update that addressed compatibility issues with my PowerPC G4, I was able to load files onto and recover them from my iPhone drive. Ecamm are the developers who brought us such Mac classics as iGlasses and iChatUSBCam.

Apple seems to have deliberately omitted hard drive storage from the iPhone (probably to protect the underlying OS X files from public scrutiny and hack-cidents). Hard drive storage is a valuable component of any portable media player since it allows you to bring files with you that you'd normally carry on a separate thumb drive.

To deliver your files from one computer to another, you will have to install iPhoneDrive on the receiving computer. I found that file transfer, both onto and off from the iPhone, went smoothly. It took about 5 minutes to transfer a 350 MB 45-minute episode of America's Next Top Model in each direction.

Unfortunately, being the first release, iPhoneDrive has a few flaws that should clear up in later versions. You cannot rename a file once it is on your drive. Also, although you can create a folder hierarchy, you cannot drag items into or out from folders.

I suspect this is just the first of what I hope will be many third party iPhone utilities. You can try out iPhoneDrive for 7 days without restriction. After, it will cost you ten bucks--not a huge price for a feature that many of us wish Apple had built into the iPhone in the first place.

Perhaps, at some sort of Mac geek gathering, you have witnessed the maneuver I call "the HighSight." This dance sensation is characterized by the hoisting of an iSight-enabled laptop into the air, lens towards the crowd, to capture a short video or a quick PhotoBooth still. Adding to the degree of difficulty and the ever-so-slightly-ridiculous appearance of the move is the iSight's angle of view back across the keyboard; much hinge bending ensues.

eCamm Network can't stop you from using your $2,000 laptop as a gravity-defying $15 webcam, but they can make it a bit easier with the little plastic periscope they're calling Huckleberry (originally noted on TUAW when announced in October), shipping worldwide today. This little item (which might as well have escaped from MAKE's labs) will reorient your world and point your iSight's wee eye back over the other side of the laptop, easing the production of most anything that requires you to type and capture at the same time. $19.95 is the toll, and it ships with a license for their iChat customization tool iGlasses as well.