This is the second reminder that account-less preferences are going away. We don’t mean to nag, but since these preferences are “account-less” we have no way to contact you and ask that you go make an account.

You can check to see if you have preferences that need to be moved into an account by going to the preferences page. Note, don’t go there and set up preferences now, they are about to go away. Go make an account instead.

Many thanks to those who have already taken action. Don’t wait, get your free, secure OpenDNS account now. Seriously, it’s more awesome. Did I mention that it’s free?

Yesterday marked another milestone in OpenDNS’s history; we served our 100 billionth DNS request. I remember how excited we were to serve 1 billion DNS requests in our first month. Compare that to yesterday where we served 1,071,072,782 queries in a single day.

This milestone is also a good time to point out that our DNS service has had zero downtime since the day it launched. We put up a system status website a couple weeks after we launched to show you just how reliable we are.

Or put simply…

And growing…

P.S. Some of you have asked what the 100 billionth DNS request was. Since we have five locations and we process stats in large aggregates every few minutes it is hard to tell. If we had to guess, we’re pretty sure it was either for TechCrunch or Digg.

Thanks to Seg for helping us put together instructions for setting the Nintendo Wii to use OpenDNS.

Whether you’ve had DNS issues with your Wii in the past and need something more reliable, or you just want to speed up performance and safeguard against future outages, switching to OpenDNS will do the trick.

Note: if your console is connected to the Internet via WiFi router, we’d recommend changing the settings on your router instead of the Wii itself.

There’s no reason anyone should have to deal with flaky DNS. The students at Brown University went without Internet connectivity for 3 hours (!) yesterday because their DNS was less than reliable.

Brown University, if you can hear us: use OpenDNS!

We made some updates to our support system yesterday and as a consequence, our contact email was down for a half-day. We messed up and we’re sorry. If you wrote in during that time, please give us another chance and resend your email. We’ll be snappy in our reply.

Jason Sjobeck
President, The Sjobeck Company; Treo Enthusiast

OpenDNS: Tell us about yourself. What do you do for a living?

JS: I’m the president of The Sjobeck Company. We’re internetworking consultants. We design, install, manage and troubleshoot our clients’ networks and devices nationwide.

OpenDNS: I know mobile devices are integral to your business. Which are your
favorites?

JS: The Treo 650. I have a few guys working for me using them as well as a few Blackberrys. I prefer the Treo over the Blackberry, since whatever it lacks in email, it makes up for in all of its other functionalities and openness. I want to get a new one that does EDGE or EVDO or UTMS (it is effort to keep track of all the carriers’ broadband acronyms) but I just haven’t come across one yet that fits. The perfect solution would be the Treo 650, but with WiFi & UMTS & be a hair smaller/thinner/lighter with another 24 hours battery life. Can you invent me one of those? You would be a kajillionaire if you could.

OpenDNS: I wish I could. So you love your Treo, but prior to OpenDNS, did
DNS service for your Treo cause any problems for you?

JS: Wasted time. Not to mention the annoyance of having to type URLs into
the tiny little address bar. If you made a mistake, it wouldn’t redirect you or give you a nice list of choices of places you probably meant to go. It was a problem of wasted time on typos, multiplied 30 fold over all of our employees and clients.

OpenDNS: Would you recommend OpenDNS to other businesses who rely on
smartphones?

JS: Definitely. The carriers’ name servers don’t do anything special — fast, useful, unique, safe, et cetera — while OpenDNS does all those things. I recommend OpenDNS for all users of all smartphones because I’ve noticed on our few dozen Treos so far fast, safe, reliable URL resolution as well as the time and money saving feature of URL redirection for mistyped URLs.

OpenDNS: Is it time to expect more from your phone?

JS: Absolutely. I know it sounds a little extreme to say, but every second counts. I’m driving, working, eating, have a client on the phone, have a vendor on call-waiting, have to email in an order for a part and I dont want to be buggering-around with my browser looking for sites. Drives me just a tiny bit (more) crazy. Any chance to make the day flow a little smoother is well worth it.

Note to OpenDNS customers: Use OpenDNS on your mobile device! We have some mobile instructions but are always looking for more. If you’ve successfully set up OpenDNS on your mobile, tell us how you did it. Post your instructions here, send us an email or share them in the OpenDNS Forums.