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.

Dust off that FTIR table you've got down in the basement and fire up your internets to play with Touché, an open-source multi-touch tracking environment for Leopard. You too can have a giant iPhone-like interface in your own den.

That's right, no more calling up Perceptive Pixel with (emotional) support questions or fretting over when Surface will invade your Motel 6 with a Blue Screen of Touchy Death. Touché is free, just like a number of other apps from Georg Kaindl. Said FTIR table, however, is slightly less than free. But once you've got a table, a Mac running Leopard and some functional digits, you're ready to rock multi-touch style.

Other apps from Georg that may tickle your fancy include:

• AppUpdate, a Dashboard widget that checks for updates using MacUpdate and VersionTracker and Apple's software directory. We covered it back in 2006.
• WidgetUpdate does the same thing but for widgets (shocking, I know). We covered this back in 2005.
• VoodooPhone, a plugin for VoodooPad for viewing those notes on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Enjoy!

Firefox 3 was a pretty historic release this week, but I'd say that Wine 1.0 might actually beat it -- the open source non-emulator (Wine, after all, Is Not an Emulator) for Windows finally reached their first stable release. And Darwine, the OS X-rated version of Wine, also got a shiny 1.0 designation as well. It still won't work exactly perfectly (you've got to have XQuartz installed, and as with all emulators, there are so many different systems trying to talk to each other that you're bound to run into problems when one of them wants to do something complicated), but for standard Windows apps (Solitare and Spider Solitaire, we're told, work beautifully), it'll do ya.

Of course, we have no idea why you'd want to run anything Windows (ahem), but we won't judge. It's your computer: do what you like.

Thanks, Luigi193!

Xbox Media Center (or XBMC) is an open source media program designed to run on an original Microsoft Xbox game console-- for an open source app designed on a "hostile" platform, it's actually got one of the better media center interfaces around (and it's easy to plug into-- you can even use your iPhone to control it remotely). And so the crew over there has recently been porting it back to work with Linux itself-- all of the Xbox Media Center, none of the actual Xbox.

If it's on Linux, it shouldn't be too hard to get it back running on OS X itself, right? At least that's what elan on the XBMC forums thought-- he hacked together a close-to-working XBMC port on Leopard. They haven't released it in any fully workable form yet (if you want to dive in as a developer, you can probably start here, and good luck, you're going to need it), but as a few people say, there's definitely a call for a terrific open source media center for OS X, because Front Row doesn't cut it for everyone.

Thanks, floris!

Aaron Hillegass, owner of the Big Nerd Ranch (and the suavest-looking Mac developer in a cowboy hat), has announced that he's releasing the source of his app Pagepacker to the public. Pagepacker, as reported on TUAW a while back, takes big pages and makes them small-- it's perfect for creating things like the Hipster PDA and other cool, easy-to-carry around organizational tools. I don't know where our own Mike Rose got this term from, but I love what he calls this stuff in the original Pagepacker post: info-origami. Beautiful.

Hillegass still has a guide to use the app on his site, and the source is now available to download as well. Maybe some enterprising open source developer can break it open, and add it to another app or make it even better.

To smudge parts of a photo, simply open the Seashore toolbar, then open the photo you want to edit. Select the "finger" icon from the left side of the toolbar and right-click on the mouse while dragging the cursor across the area you want to blur. Save the photo and you're done. Be advised, however, your blurring efforts can be undone just as easily so if you need to hide extremely sensitive information, you'll need to use another method.

Our Weblogs, Inc. buddies at Download Squad bring us this news: OpenOffice is going to be able to run natively on the Mac in 2008.

The OpenOffice suite is getting pretty impressive-- while Writer, Impress, and Calc might not be necessary when you have Pages, Keynote, and Numbers around, OpenOffice's Math, Draw, and Base will probably be welcome additions to a few Macs out there. And don't underestimate compatibility-- back when I had to use a PC at work, OpenOffice was a constant tool, and using the same program at work and home has its advantages for people who are forced to co-OS.

If you can't wait another year, there is still an alpha version available of the native port, and you might be waiting even longer than 2008 anyway-- we were promised a native port a year ago that apparently never showed up in full form. And don't forget about NeoOffice, either-- it's a very nice branch of the OpenOffice code that already natively runs on the Mac. Why wait for OpenOffice to get in gear when those folks have been punching out a native app for a long time now?