About the Commtouch Café

When my colleague Nikki and I started brainstorming a name for our new Commtouch blog, we thought about all that we hoped it could accomplish:

• show the face & voice of the people behind Commtouch’s technology
• share the type of informal information that we are exposed to daily just wandering the halls here, that might also interest our partner community or other spam/virus fighters
• have some fun

So we thought, where do you have those cool relaxed conversations about, well, everything? In a café! Besides chatting in a café about all sorts of things, people share information, sometimes surf the Internet or work a little bit, and mostly just recharge their batteries. And that is the atmosphere we wanted for our blog.

The name was also a good fit since coffee and other drinks — ok, and food in general — hold a central location in the culture at Commtouch. In our Israel HQ, we have a semi-professional espresso machine for the truly die-hard coffee fans, plus about half-a dozen others types of coffee and other drinks (Turkish, instant, decaf, various herbal and regular teas, etc.) The R&D team has their coffee ritual after returning from lunch; they take turns making coffee for the team, always in small glasses lined up on the counter, middle-eastern style Turkish coffee. And our CEO Gideon Mantel makes the best cappuccino in the company, so much so that if he’s around and not too busy, he’ll sometimes prepare it for guests with a smile and a flourish, and if he’s in a good mood he’ll even sprinkle chocolate on top. And in the US office, I was excited to discover that in addition to a great selection of herbal teas, there is a stock of hot chocolate! So during my last trip to Mountain View I pampered myself with that sweet drink and it was only the lack of tiny marshmallows that reminded me that I was in Silicon Valley, and not back in snowy Boston where I grew up.

And truly, some of the most interesting conversations I’ve been privy to at Commtouch have taken place hanging around the kitchen while someone was frothing milk for their espresso. (“I think we’re in the middle of the biggest virus attack I’ve ever seen – something like 12% of all email volume!” That was the Happy New Year virus at the end of 2006, by the way)

So, we invite you to lean back, grab a cuppa, and join us in some relaxed conversation about spam, viruses, and probably some other stuff along the way.

Rebecca

About Commtouch 
Commtouch Software Ltd. (NASDAQ: CTCHD) is dedicated to protecting and preserving the integrity of the world’s most important communications tool — e-mail. Commtouch has over 17 years of experience developing messaging software and is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam, Zero-Hour virus protection and Reputation Service solutions. Using core technologies including RPD (Recurrent Pattern Detection™), the Commtouch Detection Center analyzes billions of email messages per week to identify new spam and malware outbreaks within minutes of their introduction into the Internet. Integrated by scores of OEM partners, Commtouch technology protects thousands of organizations, with hundreds of millions of users in over 100 countries. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel, and has a subsidiary in Sunnyvale, Calif. For more information, see: http://www.commtouch.com. The site includes the Commtouch online lab detailing spam statistics and charts. 

The blog is the latest in a series of freely available tools provided by Commtouch, including:

• Malware Outbreak Center – provides comparative catch-time data about recent malware outbreaks

• Real-Time Outbreak Monitor – displays the location and content of spam outbreaks in a real time feed from Commtouch’s Global Detection Center

• Spam Lab Online Statistics –  12-month view of the size of outbreaks, top spam sending countries and top spam sending domains

• Spam Cost Calculator – organizations can input their own parameters and calculate how much spam is costing them