There’s not much to go on, but early reports about the new EMC spinoff Decho offer an exciting glimpse into one possible future for personal data mining. Formed by the combination of cloud-based backup provider Mozy and another EMC acquisition called Pi, the new firm plans to offer API-based access to your cloud-based store of aggregated personal data.
I’m sure the file-centric lens on personal data offered by the Mozy integration will be interesting to many, but I’ll be much more excited about the offering if it also supports aggregation and analysis of my communications- and payments-based content streams (e.g., email, mobile phone, credit card, grocery card, etc.). As I’ve mentioned before, this service could become the personal data “glue” that allows us to reintegrate our fragmented, Web-based selves and provide the data and analytics foundation for a truly useful personal virtual assistant.