Ed Brill is the Director of Product Management for Lotus Notes at IBM.  He is also a blogger and frequent traveler who loves the integration of TripIt with his LinkedIn Profile.  Today’s post is about how IBM is mashing up all of those tools to help make people like Ed more productive.

Millions of business professionals around the world enhance their daily productivity through their use of IBM Lotus Notes. When we delivered Lotus Notes 8, a key objective was to provide a “desktop of the future” — one that could integrate all of the content and information people need to be productive in a single client.  Instantly, developers all over the world were building widgets, plug-ins, and extensions to tie together corporate collaboration and user-customized information and content.

This week, IBM and LinkedIn are announcing the availability of the LinkedIn plug-in for Lotus Notes.  This easy to use add-in dynamically displays LinkedIn profile, status, and other information in the Notes 8 sidebar.  The new plug-in is a great example of “contextual collaboration” — where users access relevant information without having to leave behind what they are already working on.

I am excited about the LinkedIn plug-in for Lotus Notes.  It provides a much greater sense of collaboration and connection to the people I interact with every day by instantly increasing my knowledge about the author of e-mails and other content.  It leads to interesting discoveries of background, interests, projects, or education.  The benefits in improved relationships make this a must-have for Lotus Notes users, and a good reason for you to check out Notes if you’re not already using it.

For more information on the LinkedIn plug-in for Lotus Notes, visit http://www.linkedin.com/lotus