This is my first blog post here at OpenDNS, though some of you may know me from answering your support emails. It is not unusual, however, for our own users to sit in the tech support seat themselves and offer help to others. Yesterday we received the following email, and I thought it was so good we should share it:

I’ve been studying abroad in the UK for three weeks and dealing with a crummy internet connection, but at least I had OpenDNS configured on my machine. This morning, the internet stopped working for everyone in the hotel… except me. It took me a bit to realize what had happened. Once I realized the Hotel’s ISP’s DNS was down, I spent the entire afternoon configuring OpenDNS on the laptops of everyone in the hotel lobby……we have to thank you for re-connecting us to the world, even across the pond!

Thanks for such an incredible service that anyone who understands networking would pay precious money for, yet you somehow provide it for free. It’s great to be immune to one of the most annoying internet problems you can have.

- Dominic

Thanks Dominic! While we are always happy to help, it is also nice when our users take the initiative to spread the word of OpenDNS and contribute positively to their community. After all, that is one of the ideas OpenDNS was founded upon.

OpenDNS is for everyone. And by everyone, I mean everyone; moms, dads, kids, nerds, jocks, etc. We recently found out that our use of a CAPTCHA meant we were excluding blind and visually impaired people from using portions of our service. Thanks to some quick coding by Cory, we had an audio version of the CAPTCHA launched to solve the problem.

I was surprised at how easy it was to implement and I’d encourage anyone who uses a CAPTCHA to consider offering an audio alternative. There is a huge population of Internet-savvy blind and visual impaired users on the Internet who are well worth your time and effort to accommodate. If you want help with doing this on your site, we’d be happy to show you how we did it.

OpenDNS U is a webinar series we’re kicking off next week. We rounded up all the questions you’ve asked us over the past several months and designed a series of webinars to address them. The entire series is designed squarely with you in mind.

The first one, hosted by CEO David Ulevitch, is happening next Wednesday, January 30, at 11 a.m. PST. The topic is one we know lots of you will excited about “Using OpenDNS stats to your advantage: How to understand and act on statistical data about your network.” Here’s a more thorough description:

Your OpenDNS statistics are rich with data that can help you spot problems before they become headaches. Attend this 30 minute webinar and learn how to block hosts from your stats dashboard, adjust timescales to see trends emerge over time, filter lists based on domains, and much more!

We like our webinars short and sweet, so all of them will be just 30 minutes in length.

Invite friends and register here.

DNS-O-Matic continues to become more useful. The free dynamic IP update service now supports sending IP address updates to six additional dynamic DNS services: XName, D-Link DDNS, Dynu, CJB.net, ODS and Namecheap.

Last month’s announcement of a half-dozen new supported services led to today’s additions — customers asked for each one of these services.

If we’re missing your favorite service (full list), tell us and we’ll keep broadening the service’s reach.

So I flew out to CES for a couple meetings this morning and will be here until tomorrow. If you’re a friend of OpenDNS, are here at CES and want to meet up, give me a call at 415-287-7721 or send me an email david _at_ opendns.com.

For now I’m on the show floor now hanging out and walking around… I’d love to get a chance to meet some of you face-to-face.