For the audio-inclined, I wanted to share with you two recent clips about OpenDNS.
The first is an interview of David Ulevitch by Mark Howson of The Mac Nurse, conducted via Skype on July 20. The interview runs a bit over 14 minutes. Go listen for yourself (link is to web page, not file). Mark put together an interesting slideshow on top of the audio interview.
The second item for your listening pleasure comes courtesy of David Redekop, one of the founders of Nerds on Site. David and his colleagues join host Ryan Spence every Tuesday to talk about technology on Ask the Experts, on Newstalk 1290 CJBK, in London, Ontario, Canada. This past Tuesday, July 25, Redekop told Spence (and his audience) about OpenDNS.
Listen to the MP3 (6 minutes, 53 seconds; 1.6MB). Redekop explains DNS, explains phishing (and how DNS can help…more on this soon), and explains OpenDNS. I’m pleased to hear that he’s been using OpenDNS since he heard about it, and considers it for his clients.
I would clear up one point from the Ask the Experts segment. The search results page you see if
- OpenDNS cannot resolve the entered domain
- OpenDNS cannot fix a typo
has both organic (unpaid) search results and clearly labelled advertisements. Redekop says he think that OpenDNS is a service worth using even if all the results are ads on that page (thanks!), but I wanted to clear that up all the same.
Note: In describing OpenDNS, Redekop throws out what he calls “the old phrase”: “There’s majesty in simplicity and simplicity in majesty.” I didn’t recognize the phrase, but a bit of poking around leads us to Alexander Pope, the English poet.
There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.
Learn something new every day.
Gabriel Bauman
Hi guys,
Just noticed that because OpenDNS resolves ‘typos’ and other misspelled domains as if they exist, my browser’s URL history is full of ‘typo’ URLs. It’s annoying!
In thinking about possible solutions, I came up with this. Why not resolve typoed domains to a web server that does an HTTP 301 Moved Permanently redirect to either your search results or the corrected URL? Browsers are not supposed to keep URLs that lead to 301s in their history according to the RFC, so theoretically my history wouldn’t be full of cruft if you did this. I would much rather redirect to search.opendns.com than find search results at a non-existent domain. Another plus for you - my search queries would be accessible from my history even when I’m not using your DNS servers
Also, when bringing up search results, please don’t search for the ‘typo-corrected’ term. For instance, hit http://kwalms/ … You’ll find that the term actually searched for is ‘alms’. Much better to say “Did you mean to search for… alms?” at the top of the actual search I requested.
Anyway, thanks for the service.
posted on July 31st, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Gabriel Bauman
Wow, you already fixed the search results issue! Cool.
posted on August 1st, 2006 at 12:26 pm
John Roberts
Yes, we should have said so. Been considering your note. The second part was fixed yesterday. The first part… requires more thought, and may have some unintended consequences. When people move nameservers for their domain and haven’t reduced their TTL (time to live) to a low number, then their domain might not resolve temporarily, leading to our search results page. Obviously, that’s not a permanent situation. Anyway, that’s one example where your first solution requires more tinkering.
But we appreciate your comment and your choice of OpenDNS.
posted on August 1st, 2006 at 1:03 pm
David Redekop
Thanks for clearing up the issue, John, I’ll make sure I communicate it properly next time. We will also be talking about OpenDNS at our next A-Channel Morning London show. I’ll be happy to send you a clip of that as well.
posted on August 1st, 2006 at 6:25 pm