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, Cloud Computing, Enterprise 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, accumulating over half a million users before its exit. It 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. I have also launched a couple of other successful startups, sold a few, and had a few fail.

An avid Travel & Culture Photographer, documenting my journeys 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. 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.

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), cloud computing, 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...”

Google Sergey Brin Video at University of California !!

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Google founder Sergey Brin's Video on "Search, Google, and Life" at the University of California at Berkeley courses. The video is highly informative, Brin talks about google ranking and lots more inner Google stuffs and I love Sergey Brin's way of very cool speech. Do checkout the video. >>

Ubuntu Next Version : Edgy Eft Beta Released

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The next version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution was released called as, Edgy Eft will include bleeding-edge Linux technologies, with many of the packages expected in Edgy to be beta themselves. There is quite big change in Ubuntu starting from their startup services. Checkout their feature lists. It is been planned to released on October 2007. >>

Firefox Extensions for Geeks

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MacWorld has listed the top 10 Firefox Extensions for Geeks. They are designed to make surfing easier or safer, while others are specifically geared toward Web developers. Cool collections of firefox tools. >>

After 1 Week of Severe Viral Fever...

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I am back now.

Forbes 400 : Google Heads in Top 20 Position

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Forbes listed down its 400 richest Americans, and the Google founders Sergey Brin, Larry Page Google takes No. 12, No.13 respectively. I hope they will be in the top ten list next year. >>

Xun Chi : Smallest Mobile Phone

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Xun Chi 138 is the world’s smallest multimedia mobile handset with TFT-LCD touchscreen display with handwriting recognition, 1.3-megapixel camera, mp3 player, and a host of multimedia functions. One feature missing there’s no Bluetooth. >>

Google Spreadsheets : New Features

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Google has added to its Google Spreadsheets with more useful features like allows collaborating, Spreadsheet sharing, Export to PDF, Import to and export from the Open Document Format Up to 50 people can collaborate on a single spreadsheet simultaneously, Merge multiple cells and much more features. >>

E-cards used to Steal User Informations !

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Cybercrooks are using e-cards that appear to come from a secret admirer in a scam to collect sensitive personal information, a security expert has warned. Data including credit card numbers, online banking credentials, and log-in names and passwords of thousands of individuals from Australia and the U.S. has already been collected in the scam. It really sounds scary, so stay away from the ecards you receive from the unknown sources. >>

LocoBlog : Location-Based Mobile Blogging

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LocoBlog is a mobile phone application created J2ME application that allows us to link up to our phone via Bluetooth to a GPS unit and then create blogs of text and pictures which are then tagged with latitude and longitude. The mobile application obtains position by connecting to a Bluetooth GPS receiver. Google Maps is used to plot the position of blog entries. Very nice cool mobile application. >>

Reverse Engineer a Pizza !!

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Jeff Varasano, founder and CEO of Think2020, after months of trial and error, has applied his high-tech skills to reverse-engineer pizza. If everything can be Reverse Engineer like Pizza, It would be a great idea. Check out how he made with the instructions. >>

U.S. Daylight Saving Time Changes in 2007 For Java Applications

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As United States has planned to change its Daylight Savings Time beginning in 2007. Due to this Daylight Savings Time changes in 2007 will affect Java applications in the United States. The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) stores rules about DST observance all around the globe. Older JREs will have outdated rules that will be superseded by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. As a result, applications running on an older JRE may report incorrect time from March 11, 2007 through April 2, 2007 and from October 29, 2007 through November 4, 2007. So we need to just update the Java Runtime Environments contain updated rules to report correct time. >>

Google Webmaster Tools

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Google webmaster tools provide us easy way to make our site more Google-friendly. Using the tool we can get Google's view of our website, and diagnose potential problems and See how Google crawls and indexes our site and learn about specific issues. It also helps to learn which queries drive traffic to our site, and see exactly how users arrive there. Nice tool for all Webmasters from Google. >>

Swarmteams : Multichannel Messaging System

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Swarmteams is a multichannel messaging system which allows mobile groups to communicate and collaborate via the web, email, SMS and IM anywhere in the world. Swarming is about to bridge mobile phones and Internet-based communications channels with no downloads or installations needed on the mobile phone or computer. Swarmteams sounds a great idea. >>

Brilliant 10: Creative Young Scientists of the Year

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The Popular Science has listed down the Fifth Annual 10 Brilliant, Creative young scientists of the year. Their Brilliance is marked by insight, creativity and tenacity. The young scientists are listed from various fields of science. >>

The 25 Worst Web Sites!

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PC World has listed down the 25 most Worst Web Sites. The list consists of Hotmail, Microsoft windows update site and can you guess who takes the first place. It's MySpace. Checkout the list... >>

Flickr for Blogger in Beta !

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Flickr has added support for the new version of Blogger in beta!, It allows us to blog and post photos directly from Flickr to our beta blog. Flickr is using a secure authentication method made possible by the new Blogger’s use of Google Accounts. When we want to add a Blogger beta blog to Flickr, Flickr will redirect us to google.com to enter our username and password. The Flickr can never see our username or password; all of that information is kept securely on Google’s servers. Very nice and most wanted feature!! >>

iTV Apple's Next Killer Device : Video

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Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs shows off a new wireless device, code-named iTV, that lets consumers stream movies or music to televisions. It may be the next killer device from Apple, we have to wait and watch the iTV in early 2007. Check out the video of the demo of iTV by jobs. >>

11 Simple Steps to Recover From Online Addiction !!

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If you are unable to control your online usage? or If you feel a need to spend more and more time online to achieve satisfaction ? ... then you may be one of an online addict. Here are 11 simple steps to recover from your online addiction:

1. Use a timer, alarm clock or software that keeps track of your online time and Net usage.

2. Rearrange your desktop, set things up so it's not so easy to lose track of time while using the computer.

3. Change your habits, if you tend to get online first thing upon awakening, choose something else to do first.

4. If Possible, make sure your computer is not in an isolated room.

5. Ask you're friends or the neared ones to remind or call you after few hours of your online activity.

6. Turn off auto sign-ins, use busy signals, and don't be afraid to delete and block people, use frequently invite you for chats on unproductive things.

7. Make sure you finish all your important chores first, and then perhaps allow yourself some online time as a reward.

8. Take a holiday, unplug every now and then and use that time to sort out priorities and goals.

9. Have the radio on, that regularly mentions the time of day.

10. Cultivate other interests, hobbies to stream line your online addiction.

11. Take a walk outside or meet your friends rather than sit down and log on.


Got any more suggestions for online addiction... do drop in.

How to find you are suffering from Internet Addiction Disorder !!


Atlas Gloves : DIY Interface for Google Earth

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Atlas Gloves is a DIY physical interface for controlling 3D mapping applications like Google Earth. The user interface is a pair of illuminating gloves that can be used to track intuitive hand gestures like grabbing, pulling, reaching and rotating. The Open Source Atlas Gloves application can be downloaded here and operated from home using a webcam and two self-made illuminating gloves. The video tracking functionality is written within the Processing programming framework, in conjunction with JAVA library. This robot library converts a special video tracking vocabulary into mouse clicks/releases and cursor movement in order to control the computer. >>

New iPod shuffle and New iPod Nano : World's Most Addictive Music Devices Reloaded !!

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Apple has released the New iPod shuffle, which is considered as the world’s smallest digital music player and for just $79 with the 1GB iPod shuffle lets us to enjoy up to 240 songs. We can clip on iPod shuffle and wear it as a badge of musical devotion and will last for 12 hours of charge. >>

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Apple also releases a new version of iPod Nano, which is sooo slim and comes in five stylish colors with a brighter display. Up to 24 hours of battery lifer price ranging at $149. >>


Apple Rocks ! iPod Rules !! ;)

MooTools : Compact Javascript Framework

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Mootools is a very compact, modular, Object-Oriented javascript framework. Its unique design makes it extremely crossbrowser, easy to use, and a snap to extend with your own code. It comes with a choice of more than fifteen scripts, plugins and addons, including Effects (moo.fx) Ajax (moo.ajax), Dom Navigator (moo.dom), Drag and Drop, Sortable lists, cookies Manager and many more. >>

Arnold Schwarzenegger PC May Have Been Hacked !

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California police investigates the probing if computer hackers illegally downloaded a private taped conversation of Arnold Schwarzenegger from state computers. Schwarzenegger may have been the target of computer hackers, who stumbled across material that proved embarrassing to the Hollywood and body-building icon. >>

Want to Be a Mac-ionaire?

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Chris Adamson the editor of O'Reilly, has created up a javascript based game that he called 'Who Wants to Be a Mac-ionaire?'. This is partially inspired by his four-year-old’s sudden fascination with the TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Try it out if you are a Mac freak. >>

My BlogCamp 2006 Unconference, Chennai India Experience and Photos !!

After the big success of BarCamp Chennai, India the same team along with other great Bloggers joined together conducted BlogCamp 2006 Unconference, the biggest and most comprehensive blog event ever conducted in India on last week.

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We had most interactive sessions on Blogging, Podcasting, Videocasting, Moblogging and Social Media, with live video streaming and an IRC channel. I had a wonderful opportunity to chat with some of the celebrities like Wired Magazine Reporter Scott Carney, Sunil Gavaskar famous Indian Cricketer and watched the live Skype video session by Robert Scoble and much more great people.

I am highly excited to meet some of my favorite Bloggers like Kiruba, Jagadishkumar, Raghuveeran, Ananthakrishnan, Bhuvaneswaran, Varun Krishnan, Ramanujam, Aswin Anand , Ganesh APP, Amit Agarwal, Kartik Kannan and *.bloggers.

As I am bit concentrated on the sessions, I am haven't clicked much photos this time and just posting very few photos from the sessions.

BlogCamp Session Board

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Ram Viswanathan of IBM and Kiruba Shankar of Sulekha on PodCasting

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Wired Magazine Reporter Scott Carney

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Robert Scoble through Skype Video Conference

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Sunil Gavaskar Talks about his Podcasts experiences, for Yahoo! India Cricket channel.

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My Friend Bhuvan [on the left] and Me [on the right] with Wired Magazine Reporter Scott Carney [center]

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Youngest Attendee of BlogCamp

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All attendees received a cool Yahoo! India Bag

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BlogCamp T-shirt

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BlogCamp was wonderfully sponsored by Yahoo! India, Nokia, Intel Software, Ford, MeriNews sponsored the venue; Fresh & Honest helped us with coffees. eNewss, AdventNet and Mecosoft gave extra financial assistance.

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Sify helped us with broadband and WiFi.

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You can enjoy more photos from Flickr BlogCamp Group at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/blogcamp


Thanks for everyone and the sponsors, who made BlogCamp a big Success :).

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--
Balakumar Muthu






6 Comments:

At 5:02 PM, Blogger udayms said...
Hi Bala,
I just came to chennai a couple of weeks back. How do I get to know about these camps? I missed this one. :(

Regards,
Uday (http://blog.udayms.com)
 
At 5:19 PM, Blogger balakumar said...
Oh No!! I am really sorry... but information about the blogcamp was well coverd by most of the newspapers .

I will inform you if we have such camps happen again!!
 
At 5:48 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
Hi bala,
Thanks for making a note of enewss.
You can also search similar other posts on blogcamp by visiting this url just like technorati tags
http://www.enewss.com/index.php?search=blogcamp

Best regards
sri
 
At 7:33 PM, Blogger balakumar said...
Hi sri, I will check the enewss link you have sent me related to blogcamp... thanks for pointing :).
 
At 10:52 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
Hi bala,
thanks for the response.
We would appreciate, if you change the text 'enewss.com' to a link pointing to our site.

best regards
sri
 
At 7:15 PM, Blogger balakumar said...
sure sri ... link added.


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