Founded in 1948 at Rutgers University, WRSU-FM New Brunswick is one of the oldest college radio stations in the country. Just because they’ve got a legacy, doesn’t mean the technology at the station is living in the past. Luckily Chief Engineer Matt Bassel was able to take some time to answer five quick questions.

What problems at the station were you seeking to solve with OpenDNS?
The computers at the station seemed to always get infected with some kind of viruses, malware, adware, etc. and we were looking for an easy way to fix it. Also, we needed a way to filter inappropriate content.

Why didn’t your previous Web content filtering set-up work?
We didn’t like it because it had to be installed on each individual computer and it slowed down the connection considerably. Sometimes the software would crash and Internet would be cut off from the computer until it could be restarted.

Did you look at other options for the station? What made you choose OpenDNS?
I use OpenDNS for my home so I knew it was reliable and easy to set up.

On to some more fun questions… what’s your favorite tech gadget?
I would say that my favorite tech gadget is my phone (Motorola DROID). I have my entire life on it, all of my music, emails, contacts…everything!

Since you work at a radio station… do you prefer a turntable, CD player, tape deck or MP3?
This is a hard one. I would have to say that it’s a tie between a CD player and an MP3. I love to actually have the physical media in my hands when I’m getting it ready to air, but the portability and ease of use of MP3′s is also nice.

Interested in answering five questions for the OpenDNS Blog? Let us know!

On Thursday of last week, The New York Times consumer tech columnist David Pogue began his weekly piece with the words, “I’m about to make your life better. No need to thank me.” He went on to write a glowing review of OpenDNS, recommending that all his readers use it to improve their online experience.

This story — along with customers helping to get the word out about OpenDNS through tell-a-friend emails, Twitter and Facebook — helped fuel the biggest growth week in OpenDNS’ four-year history. Account creations were up nearly seven times their average and OpenDNS Deluxe has its best sales day ever. Not to mention the sales team absolutely killing it, adding Fortune 100 companies, household-brand retail chains and large K-12 school districts to the roster of happy OpenDNS Enterprise customers.

Some other interesting stats from last week:

• Pageviews on OpenDNS.com sykrocketed by several multiples.
• DNS queries hit the highest consistent levels ever; just shy of 27 billion per day.
• More than 1,000 individual tweets and retweets about OpenDNS in the two days after the article was published

The growth we’ve seen in the past week is tremendously gratifying. That said, there’s no resting in sight — we’re looking forward to welcoming more new customers, implementing more of your ideas, advancing the state-of-the-art in the DNS and security fields, and working to make OpenDNS an even better service than it is today. Thanks again for your support!

A glowing review for OpenDNS by one of the most noted tech journalists out there, in the most prestigious and well-known newspaper in the country? Check, check and check! We couldn’t be more excited to be the sole focus of this week’s New York Times “State of the Art” column by David Pogue, entitled “Simplifying Your Life As A Web User.”

“I’m about to make your life better,” he promises readers at the beginning of his column, via — what else? — an introduction to OpenDNS.

Calling OpenDNS a “magic wand” for the Web, Pogue does a fantastic job describing what DNS is and how OpenDNS works to make the Internet better. He then details the myriad features and benefits we offer users. If you use OpenDNS, then you already know what they are, since they make your day-to-day Web existence better: No DNS outages, super speedy load time (his were 15 percent faster than his ISP’s), typo correction, phishing protection, shortcuts and Web content filtering. He was especially impressed with our community-based approach to domain tagging and categorization and found it “bulletproof” in his testing.

After detailing the the hows and whys of OpenDNS, Pogue closes with a ringing endorsement for OpenDNS. At the end of the column, he writes: “OpenDNS is one of the last great freebies of the Web… Even if you use only one or two of its features, you’ll find that OpenDNS makes your Web life better.” We tend to agree!

Today we’re launching a new recurring feature on the OpenDNS blog, “Five Questions with an OpenDNS User.” Longtime readers of the OpenDNS blog may remember a similar feature from a few years back. Let us know in the comments what you think, or shoot me an email if you’d like to be the next featured OpenDNS user.

Genesis Career College is a seven-campus vocational school in the southeast U.S. The man in charge of keeping students and staff safely and securely connected is Director of Technology Robert Warren. Below, he answers five quick questions:

How long have you been working at Genesis?
I have worked with Genesis Career Group for a little over two years. Great company to work for. Very innovative in the higher education field as we are expanding into online education and want to offer a vast array of cloud-based services to our students.

How did you find your way into IT?
A friend of mine gave me an old Compaq PC back in 1996 I believe. It had Windows 95, 128 megs of memory and something like a 400 or 500 MHz CPU. Pretty much a door stop today. I played with that PC, upgrading hardware and Windows, until one day I literally blew it up. I added a new CD drive, hit the power button and the power supply literally popped and then the dreaded smoke. I quickly learned the phrase “let the smoke out.”

I had realized at that point what I really wanted to do so I built another PC from scratch, took some courses and the rest is history as they say. From then to now has been an exciting path with constant learning, which never stops. I love IT and am very passionate about what I do. It is great to have a career you love and can make a good living in.

What problems were you seeking to solve with OpenDNS?
We wanted an effective yet easy to manage and deploy solution to stop the general time wasting by employees and students on non-business related websites. We also wanted to have added protection from phishing and malware sites. We looked at hardware solutions but due to the geographical nature of our company that was too costly. We chose OpenDNS because of the cost (obviously), simplicity and great functionality of the service.

Favorite gadget or tech toy?
My phone. The new Android powered phones are great devices. I am not a big Apple fan and I think the Android phones will definitely give the iPhone a big headache! Google rocks!

If someone was going to take a look at your Web surfing habits, what are your top five time-wasting Web sites?
Hummm… well first would be Facebook, chatting with friends and family. Then would probably have to be (as of recently) BP’s website following the progress in the Gulf. Then I would have to say IT related stuff (I know pretty stereotypical, I guess I am kind of geeky). I like to read online articles, check out new products and of course stay up on the latest mobile devices. I like to hack my phones and my Droid is a pretty awesome device.

We found out a little while ago that the State of Georgia offered a grant to school districts willing to outfit students with netbooks protected by OpenDNS. We always love hearing about how organizations use OpenDNS to make their Internet connections, faster, safer, smarter and more reliable, and we’re thrilled by the shout-out from the Georgia Department of Education. We hope that our service can help make online learning a little safer and a little easier for students in Georgia, and a little less costly for the program administrators.

And, while we’re at it, we’d like to wish all of our K-12 partners our best at the start of the new school year.

If you’d like to stay in touch, head over to our K-12 Forums to talk with others in your position. And if you’re a K-12 technology administrator that hasn’t yet joined the one in three US schools that already uses OpenDNS, visit www.opendns.com/schools to learn more about how we can help, just as we are with Georgia.

When OpenDNS launched PhishTank four years ago in Oct. 2006, we knew several things:

• We wanted to make a clearinghouse for phishing data.
• We wanted the data to be available for free to other services via an API.
• There was no existing common source of phishing data that was fast-moving, accurate and reliable.

Today I’m excited to announce that the 1 millionth phish has been submitted to PhishTank. The “winning” submission was a fake Citibank UK website, which was quickly verified by the PhishTank community.

Thank you to the thousands of security pros, researchers, academics and concerned Internet users for their contributions to PhishTank. It’s you who have made this possible. You’ve protected tens of millions of people around the world, lending your expertise to help take the guesswork out of identifying phishing scams. It’s a credit to the community that we’ve reached this milestone. And in doing so, we’ve together helped protect not only people who use OpenDNS, but millions more, since the phishing scams reported and verified are also blocked by all of the Internet services PhishTank shares the data with.

As we look toward the next 1 million submissions to PhishTank (happening even more quickly), we know it’s just as important today as it was when we launched in 2006 to ensure that PhishTank continues to be the comprehensive data source companies like Yahoo and Mozilla have come to rely on. The community is an extremely important part of this, so part of recognizing the 1 million phishes milestone is recognizing the people who’ve put in the hard work.

The other part is, of course, the technology that keeps PhishTank running. Over the past two weeks we’ve begun deploying all new hardware for PhishTank’s infrastructure. And, in the coming months, we’ll devote increased engineering resources to it, as well. The goal is that these enhancements and investments will make PhishTank easier to use for the community of dedicated submitters and verifiers, and also faster-moving for the companies and organizations pulling data out.

Did you see anything interesting online last month? Between blog posts, gaming sites, Facebook updates and breaking news, there was a lot to take in. One thing you probably didn’t see — if you are on an OpenDNS-protected network — were Phishing attempts.

Since we block these scammy and fraudulent Web sites, you might not realize how prevalent they are across the Internet. In July alone, we blocked almost one million phishing attempts. That’s how many times people on OpenDNS-protected networks saw the “phishing attempt blocked” page.

Even with the work we do to make sure you’re protected from seeing phishing sites, we can’t always catch everything. If you ever see a Web site or receive an email and aren’t sure if it’s legitimate, we’ve got you covered:

Five Easy Ways to Spot A Phishing Attempt

• Poor resolution: Phishing websites are often poor in quality, since they are created with urgency and have a short lifespan. If the resolution on a logo or in text strikes you as poor, be suspicious.
• Forged URL: Even if a link has a name you recognize somewhere in it, it doesn’t mean it links to the real organization. Read URLs from right to left — the real domain is at the end of the URL. Also, websites where it is safe to enter personal information begin with “https” — the “s” stands for secure. If you don’t see “https” do not proceed. Look out for URLs that begin with an IP address, such as: http://12.34.56.78/firstgenericbank/account-update/ — these are likely phishes.
• Generic greeting: Phishing emails are usually sent in large batches. To save time, Internet criminals use generic names like “First Bank Customer” so they don’t have to type all recipients’ names out and send emails one-by-one.
• Requests personal information: The point of sending phishing email is to trick you into providing your personal information. If you receive an email requesting your personal information, it is probably a phishing attempt.
• Sense of urgency: Internet criminals want you to provide your personal information now. They do this by making you think something has happened that requires you to act fast. The faster they get your information, the faster they can move on to another victim.

As always, we’re going to continue working on finding ways to improve the Internet and make it safer and smarter for our customers. For now, happy [and safe] surfing — and if you have a friend who could use protection from online phishing attempts, let them know about OpenDNS.