In a line of pretty smart moves by Microsoft recently, the company announced that it’s partnered with Foursquare to overlay real-time results in its Bing mapping solution.

The partnership, which so far isn’t exclusive to Bing, brings real time data from Foursquare into the Silverlight-based maps experience to give customers “a real time sense of what’s going on as they plan activities in their own neighborhoods or while on the road.”

Users will be able to see who has unlocked specific badges, where and who has been crowned mayor of certain locations and more- making it easier to explore any city in the world as if you were a local.

“Let’s say you’re travelling to New York City for the week, but you don’t know what’s hot in Greenwich Village. Selecting the foursquare Map App in Bing Maps, and zooming into Greenwich Village will get you tips that show you what locals are saying about the hot spots in that area,” Microsoft explains in the announcement.

It was a good idea for Microsoft to make this move before Google and Yahoo do, hopefully wooing some die-hard Foursquare users, but Google and Yahoo will undoubtedly follow suit- with Google likely planning its integration after it sees how Bing and Yahoo do it.

On the other hand, Google wants to have its own Foursquare-esque solution instead of simply coat-tailing on its success.  Either way, Bing is the only game in town that offers real-time Foursquare updates at the moment, and for now, it has the upper hand.

Microsoft has always had high hopes for Silverlight, it’s Flash alternative, and has announced its availability to mobile developers in hopes of gaining usage in the explosion of mobile gaming and the future of 3D development on mobile devices.

Developers can download a comprehensive set of tools for Silverlight development on the Windows Phone 7 Series, including Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7 Series add-in to use with Visual Studio 2010 RC, XNA Game Studio 4.0, Windows Phone 7 Series emulator for application testing and a separate downloadable Expression Blend for Windows Phone Community Technology Preview.

Though there’s hardly a thriving development community waiting in the wings to develop apps for the Windows Phone 7 Series, doing so using the newly released Silverlight development toolset allows access for things such as the accelerometer, a Microsoft Location Service for  location information, the Microsoft Notification Service to push information, regardless of whether or not an application is running and hardware-accelerated video with DRM, among other things.

It’s definitely a comprehensive suite of tools, but the problem remains that there’s simply no interest in developing for Windows Mobile devices- at least not yet, or anytime in the near future.  Developers focus on platforms that sell, and that are popular with users.  At the moment that’s iPhone and Android, bottom line.  This isn’t to say that Microsoft isn’t doing the right things to set the stage for increased consumer enthusiasm and interest from developers, but there’s still a long way to go.

There’s been healthy competition recently between makers of so-called “full Web capable” mobile browsers from the likes of Opera, Mozilla and others, but who will come out on top once the dust settles?

Skyfire, a mobile browser we’ve kept our eyes on for a while now, is ramping up its efforts and making a few changes internally to better compete in the increasingly crowded segment of mobile browsing.

Along with recently hiring former Travelocity CFO Jeffrey Glueck, the company has closed a series B round of funding in the amount of $5M, raising its total capital investment to $22.8M since its inception.  To put it simply, the Mountain View-based company has big plans for its browser.

As you’ll remember, Skyfire is still the only free browser available that includes support for PC-Web capable technologies such as Flash, Silverlight, Ajax, JavaScript and many others- bringing a true full-Web experience to mobile devices once and for all.  The only problem has been that it’s not available for a wide range of platforms- only Windows Mobile and Symbian for the time being.

The company has plans to introduce a Blackberry version soon, with other platforms hopefully following suit.  With so much going on internally at the company, Skyfire will undoubtedly make its mark soon.  With competition also ramping up its efforts, Skyfire needs to bring its exclusive technology to as many platforms as possible before others sweep in and steal its thunder.