Microsoft late on Monday announced the first wave of Xbox Live games that will be made available for Windows Phone 7, when the first smartphones running the new operating system hit the market later this year.

Microsoft will be launching the completely revamped Internet Explorer 9 at an event in San Francisco on September 15. The September event will mark the first time the world will have the chance to play with the beta for the entirely overhauled browser. The first details surrounding IE9 were revealed back in November. Since then, Microsoft has launched four platform previews detailing IE9’s adherence to web standards.

Microsoft's new creation is a site called "PC versus Mac". Yet if you're looking for a joke or two as you weigh up your options, you will have to search very, very hard. There are no images of bespectacled gray-bearded men in loose Levi's. There are no stray comments about antennas or fanboys.

IE9 started from the premise that the modern web will deliver HTML5 experiences that feel more like native applications than sites. Building on hardware-accelerated SVG, canvas, video, audio, and text, developers will use the power of the whole PC to achieve great performance. On the modern web, developers will use the same markup across different HTML5 browsers.

The version of the Office suite for users of Apple's Mac computers is scheduled for release via retail outlets at the end of October, in two editions: Office for Mac Home and Business 2011, and Office for Mac Home and Student 2011.

Microsoft has been helping Adobe develop a sandbox similar to the Protected View in Office 2010. Adobe Reader Protected Mode, a sandboxing technology based on Microsoft's Practical Windows Sandboxing technique, is a new mitigation feature scheduled for the next major version release of Adobe Reader.

According to a newly published Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document on the Microsoft TechNet site, Microsoft is planning to release SP1 in the first half of 2011. With recent Windows releases, the team has provided estimated delivery dates that were considerably later than what they expected they could achieve, in order to make sure there were no (public) missed ship dates. So despite the latest proclamation, it’s still hard to say for sure if SP1 will be a 2010 or a 2011 deliverable.

Microsoft made available as of July 5 the completed version of its Silverlight technology for Symbian via Nokia’s Ovi store. Microsoft and Nokia announced plans for the Silverlight for Symbian release in 2008. At that time, the pair said to expect the final code before the end of 2008. In March 2010, Microsoft released a beta of the Symbian Silverlight technology.

Although still early in the process, newly leaked documents about Windows 8 offer some keen insight into where Microsoft wants to head with the next version of the operating system. One thing that is made abundantly clear is that Microsoft has been paying attention to Apple. In the documents, which appear to come from an April meeting with computer makers, Microsoft discusses its Cupertino, Calif.-based rival and outlines plans to offer a Windows Store similar to the way Apple distributes software on its iPhone.

On Friday, TechCrunch reported that several sources, in particular those close to Google, said that Microsoft has a deal in place for Bing to be the new default search option on the iPhone. The blog is hesitant to say the deal is confirmed, however. This follows a January report in BusinessWeek that said Apple and Microsoft were at least talking about making this deal.