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 Hatha Yoga practitioner and 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, 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.

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...”

21 Firefox Extensions for Fun !

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Boingle

Boingle is social annotation extension. With the Boingle toolbar for Firefox, we can add our own comments to any web page. The result is a simple, unassuming link left in each page that allows other Boinglers the opportunity to read our comments and add their own. download


PONG! Multiplayer

PONG! Multiplayer is an online Multiplayer gaming extension which we can Play against people from all around the world. It connects to our opponent through the port 10997 and 10998. It also integrated with a full blown chat application. To chat with everyone in the Multiplayer lobby, or just with our opponent while playing a game. We can fully customize color schemes and add sound effects, and the option to disable them. download


Raed Tihs!

Scrambles all text on the current tab's page, but we will still be able to read it. This is a simple demonstration of the theory that letter-order within a word has no impact on readability, beyond the first and last letters. download


Gmail Skins

Gmailskins extension helps us to change the colour/skin of our inbox. It also integrate our google homepage alongside our inbox. This allows you to view weather reports, rss feeds, news headlines, flickr recently added, google calendar module etc from our inbox. download


Tab Effect

Adds 3D tab effects when we move from one tab to another tab. It uses DirectX 8. download


Anchorun

Anchorun is a lazy way to traverse the web. While we are browsing a page, click on the anchorun icon on the toolbar, and look the browser surfing by itself loading a random link from the current page, and then another from the next page. download


PictureThis

PictureThis, pull up pictures of any word or words we highlight on a webpage. A word is worth a thousand images as we will see when we highlight a word or words on a page then use PictureThis to see what Google Images sees. It's a whole new way of adding instant context to the web. download


Splash

Adds a splash screen to most Mozilla. We can upload our images to show in the splash and can also specify the amount of time the splash needs to be shown. download


Full Screen Homestar Runner

Make all of homestarrunner.com cartoons fill our browser window. download


Daily Dilbert

Daily Dilbert, adds little icon to statusbar that popup "Dilbert's strip of the day" if clicked. Preferred language (en,es,de,cz,pl) can be choosen from the context menu. download


Froggr

Froggr is a simple clone of the classic Frogger game. download


Confuscator!

Confuses our text message a tad, by randomizing the letters in the selected words, so that only the first and last letters are kept in place. download


FoxyQuotes

FoxyQuotes, shows our favorite movie quotes. download


AutoBrowse

Enter any search-word and any search-engine [default is google.de] and AutoBrowse will surf the net for us. download


FlickrFox

Browse and search flickr photos in a sidebar. Flickrfox provides an easy way for Flickr group administrators to monitor their group photo pools. download


AutoSlideshow

AutoSlideshow lets us to view slideshows of images of web pages or images linked to from web pages. This is mainly useful for viewing images of a page with no possibility for image browsing. download


Mood Tap

Mood Tap taps the world's mood and displays it in the status bar. Let the world know how we are feeling. It all adds up to a global mood. download


OfficePoltergeist

OfficePoltergeist is a prank extension, which allows us to play spooky sounds, load new web pages, and make windows shake, send popup alert messages, and replace any given word on a web page with another word. download


STOP in the name of love!

It is the brand new replacement for our stop button. Simply install, right click on the stop icon and choose `customize`, drag our old stop button into the window, drag the heart shaped icon out and we will all be loaded up and ready to go! download


QuickChat

QuickChat is an extension that is designed to allow us to chat about anything on any website with the users that are actively browsing that site. download


Bork Bork Bork!

Bork Bork Bork! has the ability to "bork" and/or white list URLs or message senders based on regular expression patterns. It can also be used to completely block undesirable URLs from ever loading within web pages or messages such as images, Flash, applets, scripts, etc. download


Any interesting Firefoxextensions left out ?

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My Other Popular Posts:


10 Common Words Uttered by Programmers !!

Top 5 Characteristics of Real Developers !


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