வணக்கம் தோழா / नमस्ते दोस्त / Hello Buddy!

लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनो भवन्तु

Lokāḥ Samastāḥ Sukhino Bhavantu
May all beings find happiness and freedom. May my actions help bring joy and liberation to everyone.

I am Balakumar Muthu, an International Award-winning Entrepreneur, TEDx fellow, and Technologist, who received the Top 50 Asia Innovation Award from SingTel in Singapore, Top 100 Startups Award from NASSCOM, Java Master Award & Duke's Choice Award from Sun Microsystems and BenQ Siemens Germany, and Red Herring Asia Award for technology innovation.

With over 17+ years of experience in IT/Software Consulting, with a particular focus on Japanese companies and strong expertise in Design & Product Engineering, UI/UX Web Design and Development for various B2B / B2C startups, SMEs, Enterprises, and several Fortune 500 companies. I specialize in architecting, designing, and building web applications to address both technology and business challenges across various domains, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), E-commerce, Online Marketplaces, Social Networking Services (SNS), Blogging platforms (CMS / Wiki), Usability/Branding, Artificial intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Enterprise Web Apps in Ed Tech, Retail Tech, Prop Tech, Med Tech, and Logistics Tech.

As an entrepreneur, my journey began in 2007 when I founded LoveLogger, the world's first private social blogging platform for pairs, which received a massive response from Hong Kong, Japan, China, and South Korea. LoveLogger was awarded the “Asia's Top 50 Apps Award” (winner lists) from SingTel, Singapore and the Winner of "Red Herring Asia Award" for Technology Innovation. I designed and developed the complete UI/UX, architectural framework, and web cloud hosting for the LoveLogger website, successfully scaling the platform from zero to over 80,000+ users before its acquisition. LoveLogger was featured in many prestigious internet magazines, including Yahoo! Japan, MSN Japan, Infoseek, Japan.Internet.com, Livedoor.com, Sina.com and various other popular Asian publishers.

In 2013, I founded Coworkable, an early pioneer in the coworking space industry. Coworkable is a global network and community for discovering and renting affordable, accessible remote workspaces, shared office spaces, desks, business centers, and meeting rooms. Coworkable gained significant recognition in the startup ecosystem, being selected as one of the Top Startups at the NASSCOM Product Conclave. I designed and developed the entire UI/UX, architectural framework, and web cloud hosting for the Coworkable website, successfully scaling the platform from zero to listings from 387 cities across 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region before its successful exit. Coworkable also forged strategic partnerships and collaborated with prominent organizations, including the World Startup Fest, Coworking Europe Conference, Global Coworking Unconference Conference (China), Startup Weekend, BarCamp Bengaluru, YourStory TechSparks, Coworking India Conference, World Office Expo Conference, BITS Pilani's Conquest Entrepreneurial Center, SAARC CXO Conference, Devspace Conference by VIT & Computer Society of India, STARup Summit, Tomorrow's India Conference, and the Construkt Startup Festival, among others (view full list).

I have also launched and scaled a couple of other startups, sold a few, and had a few fail. My passion lies in building innovative solutions that drive impact and create meaningful connections in the tech and business world.

A Certified Yoga Instructor & Practitioner, an avid Travel and Culture Photographer, documenting my travel journeys, discoveries, and recommendations in my photography journal at CasualWalker.com, which is ranked as one of the Top 75 Travel Blogs in India. Additionally, I am a Travel & Culture Media Reporter and have been selected as the Official Honorary Reporter for the Korean Culture and Information Service of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

I enjoy meeting new folks and replying to all emails, so feel free to drop me a line and say hello to balakumar.muthu@gmail.com

Awards & Recognitions, I have received


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.

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.

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.

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. I designed and developed the complete UI/UX, architectural framework, and web cloud hosting for the LoveLogger website, successfully scaling the platform from zero to over 80,000+ users before its acquisition. LoveLogger was awarded the “Asia's Top 50 Apps 2011 Award” (winner lists) from SingTel, Singapore and the Winner of "Red Herring Asia Award" for Technology Innovation. 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.

In 2013, I founded Coworkable, an early pioneer in the coworking space industry. Coworkable is a global network and community for discovering and renting affordable, accessible remote workspaces, shared office spaces, desks, business centers, and meeting rooms. Coworkable gained significant recognition in the startup ecosystem, being selected as one of the Top Startups at the NASSCOM Product Conclave. I designed and developed the entire UI/UX, architectural framework, and web cloud hosting for the Coworkable website, successfully scaling the platform from zero to listings from 387 cities across 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region before its successful exit. Coworkable also forged strategic partnerships and collaborated with prominent organizations, including the World Startup Fest, Coworking Europe Conference, Global Coworking Unconference Conference (China), Startup Weekend, BarCamp Bengaluru, YourStory TechSparks, Coworking India Conference, World Office Expo Conference, BITS Pilani's Conquest Entrepreneurial Center, SAARC CXO Conference, Devspace Conference by VIT & Computer Society of India, STARup Summit, Tomorrow's India Conference, and the Construkt Startup Festival, among others (view full list).

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

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

I started tech blogging in 2002 during my early college days and listed as the 'Top 10 Tech blogger' by 'Blog Street India' and rated as the 'Top 50 Tech Blogger' by 'Blogs Top List'. My Tech blog is also listed as Favorite Blog lists at their Official Sun Microsystems Web Blog. My Tech 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.

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

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, Traditions, Indian Temples, Art Galleries, Culture, Events, Museums, Yoga & Vedas, Foods & Eats, Indian Dances, Wild Life, Hotels & Stays, and Nature and Living. It is ranked as the Top 75 Travel Blogs in India.

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 Expertise & specializations


I specialize in most aspects of Web business, including strategy, creativity, design, development, and its growth. My strong expertise and experience include front-end development, UI/UX web design and usability, branding, content management systems (CMS), e-commerce, software as a service (SaaS), Artificial intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Social Networking services (SNS), Amazon Web Services (AWS), enterprise apps in Ed Tech, Retail Tech, Prop Tech, Med Tech, Logistics Tech, and Food Tech, web security, firewall, user onboarding, typography, product prototyping, SEO, and Linux & open-source technologies.

My Personal Interests


I enjoy travel & photography, 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.

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:

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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 !! :)

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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!!!

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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??

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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

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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 :)

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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!!

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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 !! :)

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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 !!

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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 !!

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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!!

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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

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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 !! ;)

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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 !!

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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!!

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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!!

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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

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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

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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!! :)

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--
Balakumar Muthu


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