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.

The San Francisco CBS affiliate, KPIX, aired a segment yesterday about OpenDNS and how it makes the Internet faster. We were even the teaser before the commercial! John Roberts and our much-appreciated local customer, Sean Cullen, were interviewed for the piece. Sean is a busy film editor and it’s not easy for him to get away mid-day, which he did for the filming.

The segment was great because it not only explained what a fantastic service OpenDNS is, but also explained what the Domain Name System is - not easy!

Thanks to producer Julia Madden and reporter Jeanette Pavini (who you may remember from the PhishTank segment last year) for helping spread the word.

If you saw the segment, what’d you think?

Since we launched last year, many of you have asked us to provide official graphics (banners, icons, and buttons) to display on your own sites as a way to promote and endorse OpenDNS. We’re lucky to have such enthusiastic fans, but until now, we’ve only offered a small logo.

We can do better than that.

Today we’re offering a new image that’s much more interesting — not only visually, but also because it has two states: one for OpenDNS users, and one for everyone else.

Check out http://www.opendns.com/buttons/ to grab the HTML snippet for your site.

In the coming months, we’ll be adding more graphics to help you spread the word about OpenDNS. Stay tuned!

Ok. Maybe not everyone, yet. But check out our newly added success stories and see the wide array of businesses who’ve turned us on.

There’s Duarte Design, a Mountain View, CA-based creative agency that has testimonials from a past U.S. Vice President and Citrix CEO Mark Templeton on its website. Allison S.p.A., a high-fashion eyewear company in Italy, also uses OpenDNS.

You think I could leverage my name to get some free sunglasses?

If you noticed some changes to the Web site today, thanks for paying attention.

We’ve talked about how people use OpenDNS at home, but lots of people use OpenDNS at work too. We wanted to create a place on the site to talk about them and show people how great OpenDNS is for office networks. Thanks to Tim, Dean, Fred, Nils, Michael and Chris for being the first to stand up and tell their stories.

If you’re using OpenDNS at home, set us up at work. If you don’t control your office network, tell the person who does that you want OpenDNS.