This is a project I did back in 2009 to allow me start programs on my Windows 7 PC from my OS X Snow Leopard MacBook.
It uses Java Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) to transfer a list of shortcut icons from the host PC to the remote control computer. The remote control computer can then instruct the host to open shortcuts by clicking on them.
Remote discovery is done via mDNS and the open-source jmdns package is included, with its NOTICE.
It is set up as an Eclipse project and you can build it from there.
Copyright (c) 2009 Daniel Heffernan. See LICENSE.txt for further details.