1. Apparatus for the aggregation and display of information on a client device, said apparatus comprising: a communications module delivering information to and receiving information from a client device; an assimilation agent receiving information from at least one information source and encapsulating said information in a first wrapper using a platform-independent extendible markup language; and an integration server in communication with said communications module and said assimilation agent, said integration server receiving said encapsulated information from said assimilation agent, said integration server comprising a rules engine for processing said encapsulated information in accord with a predefined set of rules and encapsulating the result in a second wrapper using a platform-independent extendible markup language, and said integration server providing said encapsulated result to said communications module.