Project Emporia. We’re guessing many of you have not heard of it but some of you seasoned vets surely have. It was one of Microsoft’s many research projects into social, news, cloud computing and other areas of "new media" interest.  But being a research project is just that and it entails a finite end.

Such is the case with Project Emporia, which was an interesting news app for locating stories that pertain to your interest. Think of services like Zite. It had a dedicated audience on Windows Phone and even had a few updates here and there but as of today, it has come to an end...

The good news is like all of Microsoft’s research, what they learned will be incorporated into future services and officially rolled out. We may already be seeing some of this in the form of “recommendations” in Windows Phone 8, which observes your online behavior either for apps or even local businesses and gives you recommendations based off of that (don't worry, it's 100% opt-in). Perhaps Project Emporia’s findings will be used to better augment Bing News and turn it into more than just listings.

Either way, it was fun while it lasted.

Source: Project Emporia; Thanks, Sabita M., for the tip