Things I read that I found interesting and worthy of comment July 8th through July 9th:

• Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better (David Pogue/New York Times) – hmm… guess I'm not the only one with this opinion.
• Google To Announce Major Identity Initiative for 1 Million+ Companies and Schools – The reality is that for this to ever get off the ground someone has to provide the credential and ensure it is secure since OpenID natively certainly doesn't do that. Someone will need to wrap services around it to make it simple for Ma & Pa Smith to use. Someone will have to eventually step up and vet the identities behind the credentials so the claims can have any chance of being accepted by RPs. Question is who will make the right land-grab and leverage their position to be one of the dominant few? FB and Google certainly seem like no brainer guesses as to likely entrants and winners, but ya never know, PayPal snatched online payment from the obvious early and supposedly powerful entrants.
• Aspyr Announces Fighting Fantasy for DS – Note to self: Check out the reviews on this when it is released. Maybe a FF I can finally get behind.
• iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre: Methadone for the CrackBerry Addict – yeah, gotta admit that if my employer didn't mandate BB for security reasons and I was going to spend over $200 on a smartphone (debatable in this economy), I'd probably grab an iPhone now that they've fixed some of the early data-speed and functionality issues. I'd really, really consider it if it was on the Verizon network instead of AT&T… hint, hint, big-V!
• Security Guru Calls Chrome OS's Security Claims "Idiotic" – Question posed in the article: "Chrome OS can get malware…technically speaking. But won't it get less of it?" Answer: Depends on how successful it is or in other words, how many people can be pwned by the attacker.

  To the last question in the article: I don't see how calling out an obviously and demonstrably wrong statement as such is making a mountain out of a molehill. Google, dare I say it in such a PC (that's politically correct, not personal computer) climate, LIED. Period. The end. Just like Apple says their system is more secure. No, it isn't, it just isn't as valuable to target in the same way bank sites are more "valuable" and hence "vulnerable" than news sites. Anyone really want to argue that the Wall Street Journal Online site is more secure than Chase.com?

• Chrome OS Not Exactly a “Death Knell” for Windows – Ahh, a more reasonable and sober examination of the realities.
• Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter and CNN (Ben Parr/Mashable!) – I've switched the search on one of my PCs in IE to Bing and I have to say that I'm likely to change over all my PC / browser instances to Bing. Results are solid, meaning I've found everything I've wanted and no, I haven't done a bunch of side by side Google / Bing search comparisons. The big feature for me is the popup preview. This has shown to be accurate and is saving me lots of "open in new tab" work to find out which of the top hits actually is what I'm looking for. Good for MS, actually good for Google as they could use some butt-kicking and of course good for all of us.
• Sony Not Yet Interested in Games on Demand Service for PS3 – Huh? I thought Sony said they'd caught up and even passed Xbox Live functionality. These guys have done the least with some of the best hardware (PS3 & PSP) on the planet because they just flat do not get the online space. A shame, really.
• Court Limits on TSA Searches – Very good news. Time to get the brown-shirt TSA back under control or better yet turn them back into plain old ID checkers and screen for only the obvious… and let me leave my freakin' laptop in my bag. These guys couldn't spot a truly disguised destructive device anyway. Check for past stories of their inability to even catch 50% of actual guns! What can you expect from high school dropout union workers, eh?
• Sony CEO dismisses price cut chatter on PlayStation (Alexei Oreskovic/Reuters) – and thereby continues to have one less sale than he would otherwise have. My itch for a BluRay is beginning to grow faster than my desire to hold out and get it with an overpriced PS3. Xbox really missing out in not offering an attachable BluRay player as I'd go for that in a heartbeat.
• Google's Chrome OS: what it means, why it matters (John Timmer/Ars Technica) – Not really a surprise, right? Built on Linux which makes sense. Will be interesting to see if they can make Linux everyman friendly where others have failed. Also interesting to see if they can get the peripherals and driver support thing down, another Achilles heal of Linux. Oh, oh, and the security angle… good luck with that as well.

  I'm all for this regardless how it sounds above, but I suspect we'll all find out as Apple is now that its actually near or at double digit market adoption that claiming "more secure" because you aren't under attack doesn't prove as defensible when you're actually worth attacking. More competition is better and I'm all for it, but I continue to say Microsoft has done a better job than the "cool geek" crowd wants to give them credit for.

• Sony Says PSN Isn't Playing "Catch Up" with Xbox Live Anymore – uh, without consolidated identities and consequent unified friend's lists he's wrong. PSN still in catch up and without the feature mentioned above, just won't be able to IMHBAO.