DNS is one of those things we usually take for granted. We type in the domain we want and we go there. Nothing too flashy or special, it just works.
However, via Wired News, I recently found out about a company called OpenDNS, which just opened its server to the public today. They’ve actually managed to improve on the tried and true DNS system by adding a few features that make you go "Why didn’t I think of that?" I love ideas like that.
First of all, it’s free. They make their money off of paid advertisements when you try to find a domain that doesn’t exist. The cool part is that it actually helps you find what you’re looking for if you make a typo (www.wordpres.sorg instead of www.wordpress.org), and it blacklists known phishing Web sites. I can’t believe this hasn’t been done before, and based just on the phishing protection I’ll be recommending this site to all of my friends, especially the non-techies.
Setup is a breeze, all I had to do was override the default DNS servers from my ISP in my router setup and point them to the OpenDNS servers. So far everything works great and I plan to keep the setup.
By the way, the founder of OpenDNS also runs EveryDNS, which is a great, free DNS service that you can use for your own domain names. They also support Dynamic DNS which is great for home use or mobile devices, I use it for a few of my sites and it works great–highly recommended.
