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In This Issue
- OpenDNS + Google together = A faster Internet
- There's no "I" in Twtter.com: How to outsmart typosquatting
- OpenDNS strikes Australian gold with Internet honor
- Customer spotlight: The city of Portland
- Meet an OpenDNSer: Lisako Bridgewater
OpenDNS + Google together = A faster Internet
Notice your home Internet moving faster lately? You're not the only one! The world's top publications (including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Time, Lifehacker and more) are celebrating the Global Internet Speedup, a partnership between OpenDNS, Google and some of the world's leading Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) designed to make your Internet faster. While the technology behind it is more complex, the goal is quite is simple: Make the global Internet faster for users around the world through cooperation between some of the world's biggest technology companies.
How does it work? Well, chances are you've experienced an annoying buffering or loading delay while watching a video online. That's because prior to the implementation of this new technology, content often came into your home after taking a sizeable geographical detour. Thanks to OpenDNS, Google and leading CDNs, that content is now delivered from the closest place to your living room, thus giving OpenDNS users a much better chance at uninterrupted viewing. Kitty video fans everywhere: Rejoice!
Curious minds can head to afasterinternet.com for more technical details on how the whole thing came together.
There's no "I" in Twtter.com: How to outsmart typosquatting
As an OpenDNS user, you probably know that OpenDNS offers a hugely popular feature called automatic typo correction (ever typed Yahoo.cmo but ended up at Yahoo.com anyway?). The service works by automatically correcting top-level domains (.com, .net, .edu, etc.) to make sure you get where you're going online. Well, due to an increasingly popular phenomenon called typosquatting that uses real registered domains, there are still typos we can't fix, some of which are much more precarious than a dead end. Typosquatting is what happens when someone registers a domain that's nearly identical to that of a popular brand in an effort to capture typo traffic: Twtter.com and Twitter.com, for example. Even worse, these copycats often use identical branding to make their sites look similar their popular doppelgängers and fool visitors into providing personal information.
In the case of Twtter.com, the Twitter.com imposter, the site's entire function is to get your contact information. A very appealing offer is presented to answer two survey questions and get what is, by all accounts, an awesome prize: an iPad2. It's unclear what will happen with your personal information once it's in the wrong hands — it could range anywhere from being used to send SMSs to your cell phone that you get charged for or simply selling your email address.
So, what can you do to protect your home?
- Use OpenDNS: It's the only service that will automatically correct common typos in TLDs, and help ensure you end up at the website you want.
- Watch the address bar: Legit websites rarely do redirections like Twtter.com does. Keep an eye on what the site is doing and note suspicious redirects.
- Don't share your personal information: If a website offers you a chance to win a prize, simply for providing personal information or taking a survey, be skeptical.
Know what to look for and you can outsmart much of the bad stuff. And use OpenDNS and tell others to do the same.
OpenDNS strikes Australian gold with Internet honor
Your choice to use OpenDNS for the safest, fastest and most reliable Internet at home puts you among Fortune 50 businesses, 1 in 3 U.S. K-12 schools, and the tech industry's best minds. And yet another incredible organization has recently joined the pack by honoring OpenDNS with its highest certification! The Australia's Internet Industry Association (IIA) has named OpenDNS a Family Friendly Filter, a coveted distinction that helps guide the Australian public, including parents, when selecting a solution for Internet safety and security.
The IIA certification is highly regarded because of the extremely tough tests that products and services must undergo to achieve it. The evaluation, which takes place over the course of several months, expects near-perfection from an Internet security solution in its review of effectiveness, ease of use, configurability and availability of support, among other things. Our favorite part? The IIA discovered OpenDNS because a passionate user nominated the service! As a result of the certification, more homes across Australia will be pointed to OpenDNS when searching for the absolute best way to keep their families safe online.
Customer spotlight: The city of Portland
The city of Portland is known for forethought in urban planning, green technology and creative industries so we were thrilled to find out that the forward-thinking folks in Portland's IT department selected to deploy OpenDNS for innovative, cloud-based content filtering across its entire municipal network.
Because the public Wi-Fi can be accessed by any of the city's nearly 600,000 residents at several hotspot sites throughout the city, in addition to all city employees, the city of Portland required a solution that would not only provide granular filtering, protection from malicious sites and custom block lists, but also critical remote manageability and deployment.
The city of Portland selected OpenDNS for its ease of integration, robust content filtering settings, stats and reporting, unique ability to protect against malware at the DNS level and remote management capability that would save the IT team countless resources through the deployment process and during network monitoring. Since selecting OpenDNS the city of Portland's IT staff reports absolutely zero complaints. And in the IT business that means a service is doing a superior job.
Meet an OpenDNSer: Lisako Bridgewater
The OpenDNS team is slated to double in size by the end of 2011 and Lisako Bridgewater is one of the talented recruiters tasked with the challenge of making it happen. Read on to find out what makes Lisako tick:
What's your favorite thing about working for OpenDNS?
The group of people we have here is unbelievably connected and everyone works together extremely well. Although we don't all share the same interests or hobbies outside of work, it's easy to find common ground and formulate friendships. Whether people join for lunch together in the kitchen, or grab drinks after work, there's always a sense of openness and inclusion. I never thought of myself of much of a gamer, for example, but I love our OpenDNS board game nights because I'm able to get to know my colleagues in a different environment.
You absolutely love to travel (You've got 38 countries under your belt now!). Tell me about your favorite place in the world.
I have an incredibly strong bond with Africa because of my experiences there. What started as a two-week trip to visit my sister ended up being nine months of travel throughout the continent! The people are incredibly warm and happy — and they're always smiling. From moment to moment I was moved from joy to heartbreak and back. Because of prior travels to South America, I knew that it doesn't take much to be happy, but that feeling increased tenfold after visiting Africa. As a young woman traveling alone in a very poor country, I had some initial fears and hesitation. But all of that was shattered by the warmth, kindness and generosity of the African people.
You had big plans to travel more after college, but once you got a taste of recruiting you couldn't let go. Why are you so passionate about recruiting?
A great part of being a recruiter is that you are able to meet people in different roles who have reached various levels in their careers. The people I meet in executive roles happily offer advice or guidance that I know will come in handy in the future.
P.S. OpenDNS is hiring like crazy. Lisako is looking for experienced Web programmers and Product Managers with strong backgrounds in security and start-up environments. Give her a shout if you think you're a good fit.
