A few months ago we told you about a major milestone for the Domain Tagging system and the OpenDNS community – an impressive 5 million unique domains submitted into the system. And today I’m excited to tell you about another milestone. We officially now have 1 million domains verified in the system. That means they’ve been submitted, tagged, voted on and confirmed. (This is in addition to the millions of domains in the seven Adult categories from our friends at St. Bernard Software.)

When we introduced you to the Domain Tagging system, which powers our Web content filtering service, we explained it was better than any other filtering system for three reasons:

1. It’s more comprehensive. The system has more than 50,000 people submitting and voting on sites. This is in stark contrast to a mere handful of people employed for this job by security companies offering Web content filtering.

2. It’s faster-moving. New Web sites and changes to existing Web sites are constantly being published to the Internet. Other Web content filtering systems update only once nightly, or even less frequently, and therefore fail to catch and categorize everything right away. The OpenDNS community is always adding and tagging sites, so you benefit from real-time updates.

3. It’s free to use. No longer are you forced to pay top dollar to keep your network safe and secure.

I talk to you, our customers and our community, every day and hear how much you value a Web content filtering system that works reliably and keeps the people on your network safe online. Whether it’s businesses, school districts, Managed Service Providers (MSPs), hospitals or households, everyone appreciates the service our community powers and OpenDNS provides.

In the coming months, we’ll be working be working on improvements to the Domain Tagging System that encourage more voting. Perhaps even some prizes for the most active and accurate voters… But in honor of this milestone, take a few minutes today and vote on some domains.

Just a friendly reminder that the “OpenDNS for Schools: Free and Efficient Web filtering for students” webinar is this Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 11 AM PST. It’s free to everyone who wants to attend, so be sure to invite friends and colleagues who aren’t using OpenDNS yet.

The event, hosted by Founder David Ulevitch, will answer all of your questions about OpenDNS in a K-12 school environment. Here’s the description:

K-12 schools make student security on the Internet a top priority. Learn how to use OpenDNS to enable free Web content filtering and security for students, achieve CIPA compliance, set up OpenDNS in minutes without the need for expensive hardware appliances, as well as how OpenDNS differs from competitive offerings.

We like our webinars short and sweet, so this one will be just 30 minutes in length. And no worries if you can’t tune in live – we’ll have a recorded version posted to the site after Wednesday.

Invite friends and register here. See you Wednesday!

UPDATE: Watch the recorded webinar here.

Now that Halloween is over, we embark on the two month journey through the American holiday season. I love the holidays; it’s all togetherness and helping others and giving thanks from here.

In that spirit, I got to thinking about all the ways we’ve been working to make OpenDNS easier for you and yours to use. OpenDNS is really a service every network should be running, regardless of how large or small your network is. So this goodiebag of helpful tools has something for everyone — from households to schools to large, global enterprises. We’ll keep thinking up more ways to make OpenDNS better, but as always, if you have suggestions I encourage you to submit them at Idea Bank, post to the Forums or email me directly at allison at opendns dot com.

1. A brand new video tutorial. This is a biggie, and something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. OpenDNS is not always the easiest thing to explain. All Internet users relate to the frustration of unreliable Internet and slow page-load times, and see the value of free Web content filtering. When we say OpenDNS is a service that’ll make your Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable, free, everyone wants it. But the setting up part — the finding your DNS settings and swapping your ISP’s IP addresses for OpenDNS’s — sometimes presents a challenge. The video tutorial walks you through the entire process in under 5 minutes.

2. Schedule a Demo // Request References services. This one is not new, necessarily, but since we’ve never really called your attention to it, I figured now’s as good a time as any. The Schedule a Demo and Request References were really designed with larger organizations in mind. We’ve learned that when you guys make a decision about using a new technology on your network, there are often lots of different folks involved in the decision making process. Sometimes there’s even paperwork that needs to be filled out, and calls that need to be made to existing, happy users of the service in question. Scheduling a demo couldn’t be easier. Just tell us a bit about you and your organization to prepare the OpenDNS rep who’ll do the demoing. Invite coworkers and get all of your questions answered on one snappy call. Same thing for requesting references. We’ll match you with an organization that’s similiar to yours. Have you seen how many happy customers we have?

3. Expanded router selection. We’re always working to keep our selection of routers in the instructions updated, but recently we went big and added several. Today we offer instructions for 16 different router manufacturers from the well-known Linksys, NETGEAR and D-Links to some more rare models. The goal is to have every router represented, to make it as easy as possible for everyone to set up OpenDNS, so look for us to continue adding to our gallery.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Last time I checked in I told you 83 schools had signed on to use OpenDNS since October 1. We’ve more than doubled that number in the past 12 days! So far during Take OpenDNS to School Month 186 have made the switch.

I’ve gotta give Michigan a special shout out because a good percentage of our new school customers are there. From Detroit to the U.P., Michigan students are surfing safe.

You still have eight days left to print this PDF and give it to the school network admin in your life.

Thanks to everyone helping spread the good OpenDNS word!

Wow! It’s only the 11th of the month and already 83 new schools have switched to OpenDNS!

In case you missed the initial announcement, October is Take OpenDNS to School month. That means we’re asking you to spread the word about OpenDNS to your kids’ school(s), your friends’ kids’ school(s) and any other school you’re affiliated with. Of course, I’m the first to say it’s not that hard of a sell… OpenDNS and schools are perfect together. Schools have restrictive budgets. OpenDNS is free. Schools have kids. OpenDNS has Web content filtering. See what I mean?

There are still 20 days left in the month, which is plenty of time to print this PDF and make sure it gets to everyone that can benefit.

OpenDNS customers are the best.

Seems like schools always get the short end of the stick. Teachers are underpaid, classrooms are understocked and for the most part technology budgets stink, even though security measures are mandated.

Back in the earlier days of OpenDNS, we didn’t expect the service to be such a hit with schools. But as more and more schools signed up, it dawned on us: OpenDNS is a perfect fit.

Think about it: the same Web-content filtering functions that expensive tools perform, but for free, so budget isn’t exhausted. Combined with speedier surfing and a more reliable network — OpenDNS is a no-brainer. Matt Parnell makes a great case for this.

All of the above are why we’re making October ‘Take OpenDNS to School’ month and calling on you to help us spread the word. We want your local school or district to end up an OpenDNS Success Story like Jackson Public Schools, the largest school district in Mississippi and an OpenDNS customer.

If you have kids, know someone who has kids, or simply want to help, just print or attach this PDF and make sure it ends up in the right hands. If you’re not sure who runs the network at the kids’ school, the computer teacher will likely know, if he/she doesn’t run it him/herself.

If you run the network for a school and are using OpenDNS, we’d love to hear about it.