Greetings from Barcelona. The conference is in the middle and here are few pictures from the first day. Everyone seems to be satisfied with the conference, and especially with the free beer offered by AVAST!

Yesterday’s post about how difficult it is to get a building permit for even a neon sign sparked some interesting Facebook discussions. Clearly getting any sort of building permit is not an easy task in the Czech Republic. Our own experience at AVAST shows that getting a permit for a small sign can easily take 3 months. But, we should not be unthankful. At least at AVAST, we did GET the permit.

I mentioned AVG in my blog yesterday as the other well-known antivirus brand from the Czech Republic. In case you don’t remember, some time ago AVG was actually called Grisoft after its founder Mr. Jan Gritzbach – GRItzbach SOFTware. And the Grisoft company was located here: 49°12’9.262″N, 16°36’23.723″E  (view the satellite image).

Since then, the company has changed its name. They have even moved their offices. But the GRISOFT logo is still there, laying flat on the roof. I wonder if it was ever mounted and visible or if it is still waiting for the official building permit.  ;)

In case you didn’t know, almost half (!) of all home computers in the world are protected by antivirus products coming from the Czech Republic. That’s because both AVAST antivirus and AVG have been and are still developed here. This does make me wonder why: Why here? The Czech Republic is a small country and even though its borders are surrounded by mountain ranges we are hardly a valley – at least to say – of silicon. As far as I can tell, there is no obvious reason for this. Speaking of technology, the only other thing we gave to world is the word “robot” (invented by Czech novel & play writer Karel Capek who used it in his play R.U.R. in 1921).

So why antivirus? I really don’t know but I do know why we are no longer famous for construction and buildings. It is all thanks to our system of building permits. But it wasn’t always like that. Read more…

I love the marketing endorsements that tell you that “the beer you are about to drink has been brewed since 1845”. I wonder how it really did taste 160 years ago Sure, the basic ingredients were the same but is it really the same taste? Selfishly, it is my tastes right here and now that matter  – not what it was 120 years before I was born. Actually I found a reference to some monastery brewery that has been brewing beer since 1455! Still the same great taste?  I doubt it!  Gutenberg invented the printing press around that time and printing as such has evolved a bit since then. I can tell, because I have a 10-year old dot-matrix printer that is completely out-of-date and a 5-year old laser printer that is about to join it in the attic. Read more…

To follow up on the previous post on videos, I forgot to mention one important thing: we never planned to produce ‘silent movies’. This means we were looking for somebody who could help us to record the voices.

Luckily, we didn’t have to search long. Some time back, we introduced the new Community section on our website where you could play and download theme voice notifications.  “AVAST virus database has been updated” and all the other ones. A couple of the themed voice versions (for example the “ex-president”) were recorded by our voice actor Luis Acevedo.

Here is his show reel. Play sample

Enjoy!

My daughter went on a week-long school trip today morning. She and 30 other kids will visit Switzerland, France and Germany. It is school trip in Europe by bus and that means leaving early to avoid the traffic. I brought her to school at 5:30 am (yes, ‘am’ means morning!) and since our office is close by and it takes me 30 minutes to drive home … I figured I could just as well go to work early and avoid the traffic jam later. Read more…

I watched the BBC program “How Facebook Changed the World: The Arab Spring” about the importance of social media in the changes happening in Egypt and other countries. (If you have couple minutes, search for it on YouTube). Clearly, being online and connected was the key for receiving information, sharing news, and organizing protests. Read more…

The first computer virus AVAST stopped was the Vienna virus back in 1988. That was before Symantec released its first product, acquired Norton in 1990, or even used the Norton brand to market its AV products.  It was also before Dr. Solomon’s Antivirus was commercially released in 1991 to be later acquired by McAfee (itself established in 1989). Read more…

Last week on Friday September 16  – right ahead of the weekend – our servers had a good reason to celebrate.   They were delivering a record-high 4.5GB of avast updates to our users EACH SECOND.    AVAST has over 130 million active users, but of course not everybody turns on their computer every day.  On average, about half of all users turn on their machine every day and receive an update.  Friday was therefore not quite ordinary, as the 4.5 GB-per-second-traffic-fury lasted for 1 hour before subsiding to normal levels. Read more…