Apr. 1, 2010 What if all software was open source? Anybody would
then be able to add custom features to Microsoft Word, Adobe
Photoshop, Apple iTunes or any other program. A University of
Washington project may make this possible. "Microsoft and Apple
aren't going to open up all their stuff. But they all create
programs that put pixels on the screen. And if we can modify
those pixels, then we can change the program's apparent
behavior," said James Fogarty, a UW assistant professor of
computer science and engineering. His approach hijacks the
display to customize the user's interaction with the program. He
will demonstrate his system April 14 in Atlanta at the
Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems. "We really see this as a first
step toward a scenario where anybody can modify any
application," Fogarty said. "In a sense, this has happened
online. You've got this mash-up culture on the Web because
everybody can see the HTML. But that hasn't been possible on the
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