They could bring everything together overnight; a bunch of iframes would do the trick. Would that really be an integration of services?

If I could have all of their services on one window then yes, I would say that is a start. Being able to manage my calendar and my email at the same time would be really nice. Sure I could open each in its own tab, but having it all brought together into one window would declutter my browser.

CoryC wrote:

To me integration is a lot more than just being able to access all the services from a centralized location (e.g. desktop or web page). For a service to be integrated, features and information would have to be available across the various applications.

That’s true, but I think it begins with bringing everything into a central location. Once they get everything in the same spot, then they can start to tie them together more tightly. Something like that desktop screenshot above would be absolutely awesome.

They could bring everything together overnight; a bunch of iframes would do the trick. Would that really be an integration of services?

Google=God

I wouldn’t go that far!

To me integration is a lot more than just being able to access all the services from a centralized location (e.g. desktop or web page). For a service to be integrated, features and information would have to be available across the various applications.

That’s true, but I think it begins with bringing everything into a central location. Once they get everything in the same spot, then they can start to tie them together more tightly. Something like that desktop screenshot above would be absolutely awesome.

A good example of integration would be Google Reader + GMail + Google Talk. Now, we can take it a step further by allowing users to upload attached pictures from Gmail to Picasa Web Albums. Next, view attached Word documents and presentation files directly from Gmail using Google Docs.