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வணக்கம் / Hi, I'm Balakumar Muthu

I am an International Award-winning Entrepreneur, Technologist, received Asia Innovation Award from SingTel, Singapore, Full-stack Designer & Developer building Websites for more than 17+ years, Software Consultant, Travel & Culture Photographer, Hatha Yoga practitioner, Minimalist, Creative DIY Hacker and a Geek based in Asia.

/ Awards & Recognitions, I have received



Awarded the "SingTel, Singapore - Asia's Top 50 Innovation Award” (winner lists) and the Winner of "Red Herring Asia Award" (finalists) for Technology Innovation.

Product designed and devloped by me was selected to get showcased at Nasscom Product Conclave (NCP), the India's largest platform for Product and Startup Companies to connect with Software Product leaders.

Selected at Google India - Interview as one of the Top 5 Finalist out of 16,000 + people. Created Google Kids – a search engine for kids prototype for demonstrating during my Google India Interview.

First Prize Winner of "Java Master Contest", conducted by Sun Microsystems and BenQ Siemens Germany. Sun Microsystems Duke's Choice Awards” - *** "Hello World(s)!" From Code to Culture: A 10 Year Celebration of Java Technology ***, Book. Sun Microsystems appreciation for testing early versions of Java Platform.

TEDx Fellow and Mentor for NurtureTalent Startup Boot Camp at IIT Madras.

Some of my previous Web products (View 1, View 2) have received a great response from China and Japan. Also ranked as world’s top 50 hosted blogging platform by Alexa.com.

Early contributed member of World Wide Web Consortium (W3.org), W3C HTML 5 Working Group and Internet Society (ISOC) India Chapter.

/ My Expertise & specializations

I specializes in most aspects of Web business, including strategy, creative, design, development and it's growth. My expertise and interest includes Front-end development, UI/UX Design, Branding, E-commerce, IoT, Software as a service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Big Data, Singularity, AI, User Onboarding, Typography, Developing Social Networking Platforms (SNS), Product Prototyping, SEO and Linux & Open Source Technologies.

/ My Personal Interests

I enjoy travel photography , rock climbing, simple things — nature, reading. I love travel, art, culture, highly interested and passionate about the awesome Korean culture & traditions, K-Dramas and K-pop, trying different flavor of tea, Zen philosophy, making mistakes & learning from them, DIY hacks, and Western movies and Comics.

/ My Works has been featured in



Me and My works has been featured at ZDNet Asia, Economic Times, Yahoo! Japan, MSN Japan, 100shiki.com, Infoseek, Japan.Internet.com, Livedoor.com, Sina.com, Yangtse.com, Idoican.com, shm.com.cn[pdf] and many other popular Asian publishers. Java.net published my Java Duke Holiday Pictures from 1000's of submission.

/ Writings & My Contributions

Wikipedian, contributed for more than 100's of Wikipedia pages in various topics in Computer/Internet Technology category. Contributing writer of DeveloperIQ Magazine on the latest Web Technologies.

Co-organizer of Mozilla Firefox Party India, for the most early release of Firefox 2 and the IdeaCamp Pune. Regular to Tech meetups from BarCamp, BlogCamp, WikiCamp Unconferences to Sun TechDays, BEA Dev2Dev Days, Oracle Developer Forum, Google Developer Days and many other tech conferences. Attended Sessions with David Axmark, CoFounder & VP of MySQL and with Richard Stallman [RMS], GNU Founder Lectures.

Designer of DevCamp India Unconference Official event brand and WikiCamp conference India event brand, participated by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Being a big supporter of Linux - Ubuntu & Open source movement, organized the "Ubuntu Dapper Drake T-Shirts Contest" to create more awareness and interest for the early versions of Ubuntu Linux.

My blog is Listed as 'Favorite Blog lists at Sun Microsystems' Web Blog in 2005. Blogging since 2002 and listed as the 'Top 10 Tech blogger' by 'Blog Street India' and rated as the 'Top 50 Tech Blogger' by 'Blogs Top List' in 2005 – 2007. My blog posts have also been featured at Google Blogoscoped.com, Netscape.com, Java.net, Webpronews, Planet Mozilla, Linux Toy and few other popular blogs. Made my own blogging site at Yahoo! Geocities as geocities.com/i5bala (screenshots) in early 2002.

Published Usability report on Yahoo! Flickr, MSN Hotmail and Rediff.com.

/ Contact & Reach me

Personally, you won’t find me on Facebook. To stay in touch or Want to work together? You can text me at: balakumar.muthu@gmail.com



My Inspirational Statue

  •           Self-made man

    Self- made man, the statue I greatly admire and the principle I strongly believe. "... left to his own devices, man will use his god-given talents to be creative, productive, and prosperous. Using free will, he will better his own situation and that of those around him, thereby influencing in a positive way his own destiny..."

Swami Vivekananda Said...

  •           My Guru Swami Vivekananda

    "... get up, and set your shoulder to the wheel-how long is this life for? as you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. otherwise where is the difference between you and the trees and stones? - they too come into existence, decay and die..."
    - Swami Vivekananda


How Voice Recognition Really Works !!

image

When we use voice recognition software, it takes our words as snapshots. It then searches through its massive word database for the closest possible match. But due to the tremendous variety in spoken dialects, phonetics and accents, the software often comes up with wrong matches. The software tries to learn and adapt itself to the specific accent and voice tonality. It creates a specific user voice profile, which it keeps on updating. A common analogy could be of a sculptor chiseling away at a stone till he comes up with something that slowly starts resembling the human form. That's how most voice recognition codes works. With these algorithms working overtime and hunting through huge databases in a split second, it is little wonder that voice recognition software requires a lot of CPU power.

Voice Recognition process in simple steps:
  1. Spoken words enter a microphone.

  2. Audio is processed by the computer's soundcard.

  3. The Software then discriminates between lower frequency vowels and higher frequency consonants and then comparers the results with phonemes [the smallest building blocks of speech]. The software then compares results to groups of phonemes, and then to actual words, determining the most likely match.

  4. Contextual information is also simultaneously processed in order to more accurately predict words that are most likely to be used next.

  5. Selected words are then arranged in the most probable sentence combinations.

posted by balakumar | comments

2 Comments:

At 8:41 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Allow me to explain how navigating XP using a modern voice recognition system like Dragon really works:

me: mousegrid 1 9 click

pc: (nothing happens)

me: mouse move right move right move right stop stop stop stop shit shit shit

pc: (starts wrong progam)

me: menu close

pc: standby, turn off, restart?

me: SHIT! (uses keyboard to close the restart menu and the program i didn't want)

me: mousegrid 4 8 click

pc: (nothing happens)

and so on and so forth until I have to breathe really really deeply to avoid tossing laptop across room. Then I unplug the microphone and put the stupid thing away until I have built up enough patience to try again. Think I'm not motivated? I have carpal tunnel (operation didn't work) to the point of crying every day...

 
At 8:49 PM, Blogger balakumar said...

hey that sounds scary... but it happens... :)

 

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