வணக்கம் தோழா / नमस्ते दोस्त / Hello Buddy!

लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनो भवन्तु

Lokāḥ Samastāḥ Sukhino Bhavantu
may all beings everywhere be happy and free, may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all.

I'm Balakumar Muthu, an International Award-winning Entrepreneur, Technologist, received Asia Innovation Award from SingTel – Singapore, Software Consultant, UI/UX Product Designer, and a Developer with 17+ years of experience in architecting Web Applications solving technology and business challenges. I've Strong expertise in designing + building Web products based on SaaS, eCommerce, Usability, Cloud Computing, Social Networking Services (SNS), CMS / Wiki, Passionate about Philosophy, Technology, Travel, Photography, TEDx Fellow, Hatha Yoga practitioner, Minimalist, and Creative DIY Hacker.


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.

My Startup was selected as one of the "Top 100 Startups" to get showcased at NASSCOM Product Conclave (NCP), Asia'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 Finalists out of 16,000 + people applied. Created Google Kids – a search engine for kids prototype for demonstrating during my Google India Interview.

First Prize Winner of "Java Master Award " contest, conducted by Sun Microsystems and BenQ Siemens Germany.

Received Sun Microsystems Duke's Choice Awards - 10 Year Celebration of Java Technology and Sun Microsystems appreciation for my contribution to the early versions of Java Platform.

TEDx Fellow and Mentor for NurtureTalent Startup Boot Camp at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.

My Previous Startup LoveLogger, the world's first Collaborative Blogging & Private Network for Pairs, which received a great response from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and China. LoveLogger was awarded the “Asia's Top 50 Apps 2011 Award” (winner lists) from SingTel, Singapore. It was also featured in many popular magazines & portals from Japan, Korea, and China. This product was launched even before the current popular pair apps like Pairy, Between, Hey, Cupple.

Selected as the Official Honorary Reporter for the Korean Culture and Information Service of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

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 strong expertise and experience includes Front-end development, UI/UX Design & Usability Expert, Branding, Content Management System (CMS), E-commerce, Software as a service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Singularity, Web Security, Firewall, User Onboarding, Typography, Developing Social Networking Platforms (SNS), Product Prototyping, SEO and Linux & Open Source Technologies.

My Personal Interests


I enjoy travel & photography, yoga, rock climbing, simple things — nature, reading. I love philosophy, art, culture, highly interested and passionate about the Indian, Korean & Japanese traditions, trying different flavors of tea, Wabi-sabi, Zen philosophy, making mistakes & learning from them, DIY hacks, and Western movies and Comics.

My Works featured at press / media


My works have been featured & covered by ZDNet Asia, Economic Times, British Council India, Times of India (TOI), Citizen Matters, Yahoo! Japan, MSN Japan, Infoseek, Japan.Internet.com, Livedoor.com, Google Blogoscoped, Netscape.com, Java.net, Webpronews, Planet Mozilla, Linux Toy, DeveloperIQ, Sina.com and many other popular Asian publishers. Java.net published my Java Duke Holiday Pictures from 1000's of submission.

Writings & My Contributions


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

Curator of Casual Walker a Travel & Culture - Photography journal and guide, focuses on a wide range of visual stories - connecting travel, culture, places, events, art, reviews, technology & books. Casual Walker is ranked as the Top 75 Travel Blogs in India. view.

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.

My Travel & Culture Photography


Contact & Reach me


Want to work together, grabbing a coffee, or say hello? Good! personally, I have zero presence on Facebook or Twitter. You can ping and text me:

image

Self - made man
the statue I greatly admire & the principle I strongly believe

“... left to his own devices, man will use his god-given talents to be creative, productive, & 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...”

Jumping Steve Jobs !! :)

image

Jumping Steve is an iTunes visualizer plugin (PPC Macs only) that shows a little Steve Jobs rocking out to our music. We can also toggle it to feature a Steve Jobs iPod silhouette that will... rock out to our music. >>

Help Blog.Worm Spread !! ;)

Blog.Worm
I'm infected by Blog.Worm ... get yourself too infected by Blog.Worm... and help it to spread!! ;) >>

Hacking Apache HTTP Server at Yahoo!!!

image
Hacking Apache HTTP Server at Yahoo! presentation by Michael J. Radwin, reveals the secrets of how Yahoo gets maximum performance out of minimal hardware by tweaking configuration directives and hacking the source code. Radwin cover topics such as reducing bandwidth costs, extensible logfile format and rotation schemes, dumping core gracefully, and how to avoid the dreaded MaxClients, Max/MinSpareServers, StartServers configuration nightmare. Very Intersting and Useful Presentation. >>

Steve Jobs or BillGates: Who's the Star??

image

An recent article from Wired discusses about Who is the star? it's Jobs or Gates. It explains Gates is the cutthroat capitalist. A genius maybe, but one more interested in maximizing profits than perfecting technology. He's the ultimate vengeful nerd. Ostracized at school, he gets the last laugh by bleeding us all dry.

On the other hand, Jobs has never seemed much concerned with business, though he's been very successful at it of late. Instead, Jobs has been portrayed as a man of art and culture. He's an aesthete, an artist; driven to make a dent in the universe. Until recently, Bill Gates has been viewed as the villain of the tech world, while his archrival, Steve Jobs, enjoys an almost saintly reputation. >>

Opera Mini Browser

image

Opera Mini is a free Mobile Browser, runs on any phone capable of running Java mobile applications and using an internet connection; most phones made since 2001 fulfill these requirements. Depending on how we get Opera Mini, our provider may charge us for the actual download. When surfing with Opera Mini, Web pages are optimized and compressed before being sent to our phone. This means that even though our mobile provider may charge us for the data which is transferred to our phone, the amount of data transferred is significantly less than it would normally be, making mobile surfing cheaper. Opera Mini, Seems to be very COOL !! >>

Linux Fun Animations from IBM :)

image

IBM has invested a billion dollars in Linux, they have made a little investment in some Linux fun. They created these animated features for our enjoyment - watch them and have a laugh :)... >>

Cool Firefox Keyboard Tips!!

image

Lifehacker has a listed some cool keyboard shortcuts for Firefox. It shows how to select the location bar, the search bar, moving back and forward through sites, changing the search engine, and even how to perform tasks that are enabled by extensions, like spellchecking. All Firefox users must checkit out. >>

JAVA : Programming language of the year 2006 !! :)

image

image

Java has won the "TIOBE Programming Language of 2006" award. The Java language has increased its popularity in 2005 with 4.77%. The runners up for 2005 are C# (+1.35%) and suprisingly Visual Basic (+1.17%)... heheeeheee ;). Sound's really COOL... Java ROCKS EVERYWHERE!! >>

iMac G5 vs iMac Intel Processors Difference: Video !!

image

Watch this video to feel the speed difference between the iMac G5 Processors with the iMac Intel Processors, the difference is quite amazying. Is the apple's move towards Intel processor is correct??!! >>

World's First Computer Bug !!

image

Look at the World's First Computer Bug Moth found trapped in the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". They put out the word that they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a computer program". What a bug :) >>

JAVA Quick Reference!!

image

JAVA Quick Reference card by Jialong, lists all the basic Java datatypes, classes, Operators, Java packages. A very good handy tool for fast reference and useful for basic level of users, espceially if you are preparing for SCJP examination. >>

JFlash : Flash for JAVA

java.gif

JFlash, helps to bring Macromedia Flash functionality to Java our applications. The JFlash project has created a pure-Java player for Flash .swf files that runs in J2SE or J2ME (CLDC 1.0 / MIDP 2.0). The current J2SE version is in Alpha which supports most of the functionality of the Flash 3 format. JFlash seems to be very COOL API, that will introduce lots of possibilites between JAVA and Flash. >>

Apple Mac VS PC Love Story !! ;)

image

Watch this funniest video ;), about a love story between Apple Mac and PC, quite interesting and very good work by mediaest ... >>

Developer.com’s Product of the Year 2006 Winners !!

image

Developer.com Annonced the Product of the Year for 2006 and the Winners are ....

JSR (Java Specification Request) of the Year:
JSR 244: Java EE 5.0

Wireless/Mobile Development Tool or Add-in of the Year:
J2ME™ Wireless Toolkit From Sun Microsystems Inc.

Web Service Product of the Year:
Google APIs From Google Inc.

Development Tool of the Year:
Eclipse From the Eclipse Foundation

Framework of the Year:
JavaServer Faces From Sun Microsystems Inc.

Security Tool or Add-in of the Year:
Sun Java System Identity Manager From Sun Microsystems Inc.

Open Source Tool of the Year (Tie):
OpenOffice 2.0 From OpenOffice.org and
Firefox From Mozilla Foundation

Technology of the Year:
AJAX From Mozilla Developer Center

Development Utility of the Year:
Ant From The Apache Software Foundation

Database Tool or Add-in of the Year:
MySQL 5.0 From MySQL AB

Java Tool/Add-in of the Year:
Sun Java™ Studio Creator By Sun Microsystems Inc.

That's a very COOL list, like last year Java-technologies has taken most of the categories... :) >>

iPod designer Ive Honored by Queen!!

image

Jonathan Ive, 38, Apple's senior vice president of design, on Friday was awarded the title of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the queen. The title recognizes Ive's achievements in industrial design as leader of the team that produced not only the iPod but also the iMac, iBook and PowerBook computer lines in his nearly 13-year career at Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple. Hats off to Jonathan Ive !! :) >>

Intel's New Logo!!

image

After 37 year Intel changes it's logo. Intel is increasingly positioning itself as a consumer-oriented, digital media platform provider rather than merely a supplier of CPUs and components for other manufacturers. The logo seems to be very simple doesn’t seems to be creative.. >>

Japanese Smileys are Different

image

We all have used smileys [Emoticons] in our mails to show our feels, which are read horizontally, but japanese who always think different have different smileys(Emoticons) are read vertically. Most look simply crazy to me, they have smileys with 15 and more letters. The translation is sometimes funny as well. (^ _^) [means smile] >>

How To Pick A Programming Language

image

If you want to pick a new Programming language, read on the article on "How To Pick A Programming Language" by Tim Daneliuk. Interesting to read on and quite funny too. >>

Happy New Year 2006!! :)

image

--
Balakumar Muthu


top