Windows Phone 7 Has been officially finished and released to manufacturing by Microsoft.

Microsoft’s hardware and carrier partners have received the final build and code so that they can integrate their own software and services before devices are shipped later this year. There have however, been several last minute changes to the platform:

Windows Phone 7 has to be the most thoroughly tested mobile platform to come out of Redmond. Microsoft say that they had nearly 10,000 devices running daily automated tests, 0.5 million hours of active self-hosting use, over 3.5 million hours of stress test passes and a whopping 8.5 million hours of fully automated test passes. Added to all that Microsoft have had thousands of early adopters and independent software vendors testing WP7 and giving feedback.

Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone engineering, Terry Myerson said:

"We are ready. This has been one of the most incredible product development efforts I’ve ever been a part of. Today’s milestone is exciting not just because of what we’ll deliver to customers later this year, but how it sets us up for success over the long term in the mobile space… we’re really just getting started."

Windows Phone 7 is expected to drop in October for Europe and November for the US.

Microsoft is planning to support push for Hotmail on a wide range of mobile devices including the iPhone, Windows Phone devices and Android. It’s due for release on Monday.

Push support will be using the exchange active sync technology, which is currently available on nearly 300 million phones. Push e-mail allows synchronisation of e-mail between a device and the web. Calendars and contacts can also be synchronised. Microsoft’s plans were originally revealed in April this year.

Microsoft revealed the launch date earlier this week in an interview with CNET News.com. Dharmesh Mehta gave Monday the 30th of August as the launch date.

When it comes to accessing Hotmail, Microsoft have traditionally taken the closed door approach compared to it’s rivals. Google already offers Exchange ActiveSync for Gmail, so it looks like Microsoft is aiming to match Google’s Gmail service and then some. Hotmail’s new features include a single contact list, showing all online contacts including those on social networking services. Active Views has also been introduced to integrate the content and functionality of websites directly into e-mails received by users. Which means you can view content from websites from within an email rather than having to open a browser.

The support foe active sync has been slowly introduced by Microsoft over the past month. In a message to those trying to join the service, Microsoft explained: "To get Hotmail on-the-go, you recently tried to set up a service called ActiveSync from your mobile device. We are really glad that you’re interested, but we had so many sign-ups that we had to temporarily stop accepting new ones."

When the service goes live on Monday, you will be able to select the Exchange option on your mobile and point to m.hotmail.com.

Internet Explorer 9 isn’t due out until mid September, but Microsoft Russia have got a bit excited and posted a screen shot of IE9’s user interface. The screen shot has been confirmed as genuine.

The site has been pulled since the image was posted, so the above screen shot is all we have for now. Mary managed to find out the following from the site however.

The evidence that Windows Phone 7 will be released to the consumer market place soon is mounting. A video of the up and coming LG E900 has been leaked to YouTube, and it appears to be sporting WP7.

The video takes you through the interface and device features, but the camera is disappointingly out of focus and will do you eyes in.

Not much is known about the device other than it has a side mounted USB port and some sort of DNLA integration. It seems to be like the C900 but without the keyboard.

The design of the device is minimalistic with clean lines, a look that most manufacturers are going for these days. Get a peek at the vid here.

Microsoft has released the next major version of Windows Live Essentials. The 2011 beta suite comes with a number of bug fixes, improvements and new features.

The first beta was released by Microsoft on June 24th. Essentials programs include: Windows Live Movie Maker, Mail, Writer, Sync, and Family Safety. This version of WLE is designed to take full advantage of Windows 7. All applications now use ribbon UI and integrate with Windows 7 by using Jumplists. Also included in the package is Windows Live Sync, which allows users to synchronize their files on the web and across multiple machines.

Windows Live Photo gallery has several new features such as photo fusing, which allows two photos to be blended together. facial recognition has also been improved.

The beta’s build number is 15.4.3001.809 but some applications have a different build number:

Movie Maker – 15.4.3002.0810
Messenger – 15.4.3002.0810
Mail – 15.4.3002.0810
Photo Gallery -15.4.3002.0810
Sync – 15.4.3001.0809
Family Safety – 15.4.3001.0809
Writer – 15.4.3001.0809

Microsoft are going to include photo editing in it’s Mac version of Office. And mini charts will be included it it’s version of Excel. Office for Mac 2011 should be out in October according to Microsoft.

A video post on the Office for Mac website said the new Mac version will give Apple lovers the ability to edit photos in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. office 2010 already has this feature, which was released this summer.

Microsoft have also said it’s added the Sparklines feature to Excel. The Sparklines tool allows for miniature charts that fit in a single cell, which gives users the ability to track individual trend data points.

So the Mac version office has been pulled more into line with the Windows version by Microsoft.

An evangelist with Microsoft’s Mac team, Kurt Schmucker said: "What we’ve been able to do in Office for Mac 2011 is to bring a lot of power to bear to produce a professional-looking document that’s still compatible with Office for Windows,"

Microsoft has announced that it plans to release the public Beta of IE9 on the 15th of September.

Invites were sent out to members of the press for a web IE9 beta event. The rumour is that Internet Explorer 9 will have a minimalist user interface. Microsoft will not be using Ribbon or Metro UI elements, instead IE9 will sport a look similar to that of Google Chrome’s. Having said that some very unique features are expected in IE9 UI.

Leaked screen shots of an early build confirmed plan’s for a new download manager in IE9. The official logo for IE9 has also been revealed, but not much to be revealed really…Same as usual. You can read more about what IE9 will bring in one of our earlier blogs.

The latest beta for Firefox 4 has been released by Mozilla, this makes it the Third beta for the Firefox 4 development. Beta three supports 30 languages and also supports multi-touch on Windows 7. This gives users the ability to interact with the browser without the need for a mouse. Several changes have been made to JavaScript to give a faster and more streamlined experience.

The C++ representation of JS has also been changed in Beta 3, which allows the browser to execute numeric code more efficiently. This means more streamlined graphics in web applications.

Mozilla has included a feedback add-on in the beta, giving users the ability submit bugs and errors as they come across them. Mozilla has said that the feedback add-on has received 3,500 reports a day from over half a million testers. An extra stat also shows that the majority of testers for Firefox beta are male, and use the web for between 2-6 hours a day. They primarily use Firefox for entertainment and communication.

Microsoft has added a new section to their Windows 7 site. Entitled “PC vs. Mac”, it’s the first time Microsoft have openly hit back at Apple’s campaigns against the company.

Many thought that Microsoft would never respond to Apple’s borderline smear campaigns. but it seems that Microsoft have decided to take Apple on. The informative website implies that Macs are potentially "spoiling your fun" and that "take time to learn".

The site compares Windows 7 to Mac OS X in categories such as:

• Having fun
• Simplicity
• Working hard
• Sharing
• Compatibility
• Choice

And the conclusions drawn in these categories are pretty scathing in regards to Apple’s OS.

Arguments against Macs include:

• Macs might spoil your fun
• Macs can take time to learn
• Macs don’t work as well at work or at school
• Macs don’t like to share
• Macs might not like your PC stuff
• Macs don’t let you choose

Not a single positive thing is said about the Mac, but why would it be. At the bottom of the page visitors are encouraged to "find your perfect PC". There are also tweets featured on the site about Windows 7 that show how the OS is being received by users.

An undisclosed Microsoft research project named “Menlo”, has been revealed as a prototype mobile phone and operating system.

The Menlo project was thought to be a tablet PC, but now looks to be a prototype mobile device based around user experience and navigation. The revelation came from a research paper, "User Experiences with Activity-Based Navigation on Mobile Devices", written by Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet. The device is described as being a “prototype” with a “touch screen” and bizarrely, a “barometer”.

The paper describes the device: "Menlo is a prototype mobile device with a capacitive touch screen (4.1‖ diagonal, 800×480) running Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 which incorporates a Bosch BMA150 3-axis accelerometer and Bosch BMP085 digital pressure sensor (barometer),"

It’s seems unlikely that the Menlo project will ever go to retail. Rather, the device has been designed in order to test a new Silverlight-based application called “Greenfeild”, that allows users to locate a parked car.

The paper describes Greenfield as and application: "To explore activity-based navigation we designed Greenfield, an application that provides an activity-based trail to a parked car. This is useful both in situations where one has lost one’s car and needs to find it, but also in finding a car parked by someone else, e.g. a private car parked by another family member, or a shared business vehicle."

Foley’s paper suggests that Microsoft could be developing a new mobile OS that isn’t WP7, that will run on a number of different processors.

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