I was surfing around last night and found two very cool makeover hacks. The first is a redesigned site theme for Google Reader that is built on the Stylish Firefox extension. The theme essentially mimicks a OSX application and, IMO, improves Reader quite a bit.
The next makeover hack is actually far more straightforward, it's a Greasemonkey script that vastly improves the look of Gmail's tired interface. I love this, I really do think that Google should hire this guy.
What I find fascinating about these projects is that they are individuals who are just doing them for no apparent economic reason, and that the extendibility of the browser means that these hacks are developed completely independent of the entity hosting the applications.
Insofar as there being a business here, I really doubt it because 1) they depend on a browser that is still has a small share of the market, 2) most people don't really care about modding everything like I do, and 3) I doubt I would pay for this. Having said all that, there exists a possibility that companies could emerge that do nothing but provide a better user experience for mainstream applications than what the provider themselves makes available.
I was also thinking about SAP's Project Muse evolving to the point where it is a general purpose UI framework that companies use to create custom interfaces to SAP that are purpose specific for users or just much better than what SAP itself is capable of delivering.
Perhaps the model could evolve to where application providers don't actually build a UI, they deliver a UI framework to the marketplace and then select the best 3rd party UI to deliver to customers? I rather doubt that will ever come to pass, but it's interesting to think about nonetheless.
Technorati Tags: Google, puppy, UI
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