opus:interactive | If These Servers Could Talk

Opus Interactive has virtualized 22 of their servers in a effort to upgrade internal systems.  Instead of trying to sell the servers, or reprovision them, Opus Interactive decided the best thing to do is to donate them to Omni Media Networks Inc.  The donated servers were needed in an effort to expand Omni Media Networks Internet outreach programs.  Opus Interactive is very proud to help support such a noble orginaztion as Omni Media Networks. 

OMNI Media Networks (”OMNI”) is a public benefit non-profit organization providing:  Education, Information and Entertainment directed to people with disabilities (primarily vision impaired persons) and older individuals who would enjoy the variety of  “Webcasting” that they offer. To listen to  OMNI webcasting programs, click here.   OMNI shows are full of a variety of talent from the disabled community and older members of our community. They ensure the content provided meets all ADA (American Disabilities Act) requirements.

Omni Networks puts on a Golden Hours radio reading and information service for those who are unable to read traditional printed material, the physically disabled and senior citizens. Golden Hours is on the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Jerry DeLaunay; Progam Director, is responsible for the overall management of Golden Hours, and he is the chairman of the board of Omni Media Networks.  Jerry has been involved in managing Golden Hours since 1995. 

Iris was Jerry DeLaunay’s faithful and friendly guide dog. But now there is another IRIS available to vision-impaired, physically-disabled, and senior citizen listeners of the Omni Media Networks audio streams. This IRIS stands for Internet Radio-Reading Information System.

IRIS is a tabletop appliance, similar in size to a table radio, that connects to the Internet and allows you, with a simple press of a button, to listen to up to 20 different audio streams — all your favorite Omni streams and more. The lineup of stations is listed here.

If you wish to donate or support OMNI you can donate here, or you can sign up to be a volunteer here.

Opus Interactive has joined with Arbor Day Foundation in their mission to “…inspire people to plant, nurture and celebrate trees.”  Arbor Day Foundation is the largest nonprofit tree-planting organization, with nearly one million members and averages over 12 million trees planted each year.

So with that, the question becomes with almost 12 million trees each year, why need more?  Well over 400 million trees need to be planted in America’s forests after recent forest fires.  For the last 3 years we have had record number of forest fires.  In addition, hundreds of thousands of acres have been destroyed by insect infestations.  The replanting of our forests is vitally important for soil erosion control, food for wildlife, cleaner air, and aids in purification of our rivers, streams, and lakes. Below is a great video from the Arbor Day Foundation that shows excactly that point. 

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

At Opus Interactive we feel that this is extremely important to do something about. So with a partnership with Arbor Day Foundation, we are helping in Replanting America’s Forests one tree at a time. For each customer we have, we purchase trees in their behalf.  In addition, we double that purchase to represent trees for Opus Interactive.  Our goal is to create an Opus Interactive Family Tree Forest, comprised of trees that represent us and our customers.  Feel free to help support this great cause at Arborday.org.

There is no argument that there is a lot of crap on the Internet.  And I am not referring to poorly designed web sites, time wasting games and an overabundance of news about absolutely everything.  The deep, dark alleys of the Internet (and sometimes not all that far removed) are filled with pornography, crime, drugs, hate and all manner of content I do not want my children to stumble upon and be subjected to.  Regardless of what some people may say about open mindedness and tolerance I won’t have it. Garbage in equals garbage out.

For that reason, several of us here at Opus who have young children have implemented a free service from OpenDNS.com on our home networks.  Put simply OpenDNS offers filtered DNS resolution services for a network or specific devices.

More specifically OpenDNS provides DNS resolution services for your home, school or business network that filters phishing and adult content websites based on a category system.  You can specify how stringent you are with the filtering by selected various category types.  In addition you can block specific websites that would not normally be blocked such as Youtube and Myspace or other such “gray area” sites.

My purpose for using the service is to protect what is viewed from my home network.  Utility of the service does not stop there however.  As a business it could be use to filter webmail sites, job search sites, and other content based on HR policies.  A school may use it to protect students not only from harmful content but maybe also from social networking sites and other sites not appropriate for the school day.

As a user of the service you have access to a dashboard where you can control how your filtering works and view reports of usage on your network.  The service is free and paid for by ads placed on search result pages.

Implementation is as easy as creating an account then configuring your computer to use the OpenDNS servers as your DNS resolution servers.  The service can be configured to work with a dynamic DNS service so that you don’t have to have a static IP address from your provider to still make use of the service.

The best way to implement the use of OpenDNS on your network is to add the OpenDNS servers to the DHCP scope options on your network so that all computers on your network automatically use the OpenDNS servers.

This of course isn’t fool-proof as all it would take in this scenario to skirt the use of OpenDNS is changing the DNS server settings on the computer.  Most young children will not know anything about how to make these kinds of changes.  Also, in the near future with the adoption of IPv6 into the home, self configuration of IP addressing will become much more difficult increasing the dependence on DHCP and DNS services making it easier to force the use of the desired DNS servers.  There are more concrete ways to protect against getting around the use of OpenDNS but we won’t discuss them here.

I feel one of the greatest benefits of the OpenDNS service is that it can be a set it and forget it service for home use.  Once my firewall at home had its DHCP service configured with the OpenDNS DNS servers and I configured my filter settings at the OpenDNS site I knew that the devices on my network were protected.  Being an IT nerd and hobbyist I would love to roll my own filter using Squid, filtering built in to a firewall, or any other slick method to protect my network.  But who has the time?  I wouldn’t want my kids to stumble onto something (What are those daddy?) because I didn’t have the time to keep the filtering service updated or operational.  While no filtering is 100% it is OpenDNS who keeps the content on the internet categorized and blocked.  I don’t have to do it. 

Check out the OpenDNS.com website to learn more about this really cool service.  A full list of features is on their site here (http://www.opendns.com/features/overview/)