Daily Tech Briefing: July 9, 2013

Blackberry is shrugging off the concept of secrecy and is offering the public an early look at the Passport, a smartphone it planned to introduce at a September event in London. CEO John Chen explained that a great deal of information about the phone has already been leaked on the Internet.

He added that the Passport will be followed by the Classic—another widely discussed device—in November. One thing that makes the Passport stand out from other devices is its shape, which is squarer than it is rectangular. It’s similar to the shape of an actual travel passport. While the average rectangular smartphone shows 40 characters per line, the Passport’s shape allows it to show 60.

Google continues to be one of Apple’s biggest benefactors on the security front. Proof of this can be seen in the Apple Mac OS X 10.9.4 and iOS 7.1.2 updates. The Mac OS X 10.9.4 update provides fixes for 21 security vulnerabilities, nine of which were reported to Apple by a researcher identified as Ian Beer of Google Project Zero.

What’s more, the IOS 7.1.2 security update benefits from the same four security disclosures that Google Project Zero made for Apple’s Launched application agent manager in OS X 10.9.4.

The Samsung Gear Live and LG G Android Wear smartwatches are now available through Google Play, with the black Samsung Gear Live retailing for $199 and the LG G smartwatch priced at $229. Both watches include always-on displays and are compatible with a variety of smartphones and tablets.

The last users of the dynamic domain-name system known as No-IP are back online and able to reach their servers through the service.

This is nearly a week after technical glitches knocked many users off the service after Microsoft legally seized 23 domain names belonging to company. Microsoft seized the domains under a restraining order issued by federal district court in Nevada in an attempt to dismantle cyber-criminals’ use of the service to infect and steal data from more than 7.4 million Windows users.

While Microsoft intended to filter out malicious traffic and allow legitimate users to access their systems, a glitch led to millions being disconnected.