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...”

i-Lighter : Yellow Marker for the Web

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i-Lighter lets us to highlight and automatically save anything we want on any web page then get it back later from any PC or laptop. Just turn it on and start selecting the text, tables and pictures that we want to save. It supports both the Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers. >>

Secure Password Generator

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The PC Tools Password Generator allows us to create random passwords that are highly secure and extremely difficult to crack or guess due to an optional combination of lower and upper case letters, numbers and punctuation symbols. It also has secured encryption SSL secured password generator. >>

iPod now Common Learning Tool in Schools

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iPod is now turned in to a common learning tool with schools kids. Now, with the MP3 player's foothold in academia, universities and companies are quickly expanding the amount of study materials students can use with them. As schools embrace the iPod, mos of the companies are jumping in to provide content and offer a range of downloadable documents, including travel guides, a 40,000-word version of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, the Encyclopedia Britannica and biographies. >>

Work Place of the Future

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Popular science Magazine lists down how the work place of our future will emerge. Checkout the ultimate self-adjusting office chair, plus seven more concepts that will make our daily grind a little smoother and more fun. >>

Pizza Party : Order Pizza From the Commandline

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Pizza Party is a free text based software package for ordering pizza, or for throwing pizza parties. With pizza party we can order pizza with only a few keystrokes. We can save our pizza preferences and also select our toppings like mushrooms or pepperoni. The script runs on most of the unix-like operating systems. >>

DreamZhunt : Live Your Dreams !!

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If you have an innovative business idea which excites you much and don't know where to talk about your ideas? then DreamZhunt, is just for you. DreamZhunt is a nation wide hunt for creative business ideas. If you ever had dream of some cool technology and business ideas, then this is your chance. It's open for software developers, business executives and college students. This is a dream chance, don’t miss it! >>

Wireless Users Spend More Time Online

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A survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that people who use wireless internet spend more online time in cyberspace. Half of wireless users get news online every day, compared to 31% of internet users at large. 56% of wireless users in the 18 to 49 year category are men, while in the 30 to 64 year category of wired Internet users only 46% are men. The survey also exposes the insights that 40% of those under 30 are laptop users, along with other stats on cell phone and PDA use available to read through. >>

Berkeley's SETI@home Helps to Find Stolen Laptop !

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The University of California, Berkeley's SETI@home, has signed up by more than 1 million volunteers worldwide in a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It has helped up to find a missing laptop. James Melin, one of a volunteer of the project who installed SETI@home is his wife's laptop, which was stolen recently. Melin monitored the SETI@home database to see if the stolen laptop would "talk" to the Berkeley servers. Indeed, the laptop checked in three times within a week, and Melin sent the IP addresses to the Minneapolis Police Department.

After a subpoena to a local Internet provider, police determined the real-world address where the stolen laptop was logging on. Within days, officers seized the laptop and returned it. >>

Final I.T. Countdown for March 11 Time Change !

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Hour by hour, minute by minute, U.S. clocks are ticking towards a March 11 deadline that demands I.T. professionals apply special patches to avoid a headache that some have likened to the Y2K scare. In a government attempt to conserve more energy, Daylight Saving Time will go into effect three weeks ahead of the typical springtime change, starting March 11, 2007. As the deadline fast approaches, there is concern that the change may confuse computer programs set to automatically handle DST hours, and every computer system is subject to its impacts.

On the mild side, minor aggravations such as scheduling and calendar errors could occur. On the dramatic side, there is a risk that organizations that don't patch their networks properly could see mission-critical applications fail. >>

Remote Control Night Vision Spy Car

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The remote control car with a night vision camera that sends images wirelessly to a remote headset with an eyepiece and LCD, allows us to see what the car sees in the dark. The car has a 150 range, and the adjustable camera will transmit an image day or night up to a range of 75.

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The headset has a flip-up LCD monocle that, combined with the eye-piece, provides the same viewing experience as watching a 20 TV from 5. The transmitter has forward, reverse, left, and right controls and requires six AA batteries requires six AA batteries. >>

Funny Talking Beer Glass :)

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Talking Beer Glass is the perfect and a must beer glass for every beer drinker in the world. With talking beer glass, you will never run out of beer again. It talks three phases "Your beer is running dangerously low", "Refill immediately danger of sobering up" and a "Cheers!'". >>

orbiTouch Keyless Keyboard

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orbiTouch Keyless Keyboard is a revolutionary solution that removes the barrier posed by the traditional keyboard/mouse combination. It eliminates finger motion and significantly reduces wrist motion two major causes of typing discomfort and pain. It can do everything a regular keyboard does and has an integrated mouse, so by moving the domes we have full mouse and keyboard capability right under our hands! >>

How to Avoid Spam Mountain ?

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As we know, spam is more than a nuisance. It may carry malicious programs that allow hackers to penetrate a PC's security and view personal information such as credit card numbers or Social Security numbers. Plus, a torrent of spam can bury legitimate e-mail such as customer complaints that companies are legally bound to pursue.

USA Today lists down some interesting tips for dealing with spam:
  • Don't just delete
  • Write an e-mail policy
  • Try "disposable" addresses
  • Boost defenses
Checkout the full list. >>

Top 5 Applications, which Frequently Crashes Windows OS !

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Here is a list of top five applications, which crashes Windows OS frequently:
  1. MS Internet Explorer
  2. MS Windows Media Player
  3. MS Word
  4. MS Windows Explorer
  5. MS Windows OS [yeah, the OS crashes itself]

It’s just a list from my personal experience, do you agree with the list ?.

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My Recent Popular Posts:

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Yaplet : Chat Room for our Site

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Yaplet adds chat room for every site on the internet. It requires no installation or any registration. We can use Yaplet to chat, build communities, collaborate with friends, everything just with the click of a bookmark, we can chat directly with other people. >>

Fingerprint Door Lock : Finger is the Key !

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No more searching for the key to open our door lock, with fingerprint door lock it's as easy to install as a regular lock and simple to operate. It is basically a biometric reader which can be used as a stand-alone or a networked operation, perfect for home or office. An authorized person has their physical characteristic scanned and turned into a numerical algorithm which is then entered into a database. The authorized person must subsequently provide that same physical characteristic for example, their hand, to be read and recognized by the biometric reader before access is granted. It has 3 ways to unlock Fingerprint, PIN and Mechanical Key. >>

Browsegoods : Browse and Shop Visually

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Browsegoods helps us to visually browse and shop thousands of products. Currently most online stores are built for searching, not browsing. But we love the experience of casually perusing products, seeing what will catch our eye. Browsegoods was designed to support this type of undirected search. It allows us to scan hundreds of products at a time and makes us feel the real life virtual shopping experience on the net. We can Zoom in and out and pan around to find products we like. >>

Visuwords : Graphical Dictionary

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Visuwords is an flash-based online graphical dictionary, that look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. It produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Very helpful tool for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists. >>

Credit Cards May Leak Personal Information !

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Millions of new credit card issued over the past year use Radio Frequency Identification [RFID] technology. The RFID, which allows scanners to use radio signals at varying distances to read information stored on a computer chip. According to a study from academic and business researchers at the University of Massachusetts, RSA, and Innealta, many of the cards will transmit our name, credit card number, and expiration date [but not the 3 digit security code] in the clear to anyone nearby with a scanner. >>

ORBITER : Free Adventurous Flight Simulator

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ORBITER is a free flight simulator that goes beyond the confines of earth's atmosphere. We can launch the Space Shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to deploy a satellite, rendezvous with the International Space Station or take the futuristic Delta-glider for a tour through the solar system it's our choice. Be prepared to invest some time and effort to brush up our orbital mechanics background. If you are kind of an adventurous guy, orbiter is just for you. >>

Privacy Safe : Keychain Wireless Detector

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Privacy Safe is a Keychain Wireless Detector keeps us safe from wireless wiretap and peep at anywhere we go. It is easy to carry with so we can feel confident in the office, bedroom or dressing room. It can detect the strength of radio frequency generated by different types of LED signal indicator such as wireless video camera. When a suspicious object is approached or located, the "Red" light will be on and the alarm will beep continuously. >>

PenDriveLinux.com : Running Linux from USB Drive

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PenDriveLinux.com provides great help about installing and running Linux on any computer that can boot from a USB flash device. It allows us to bring our operating system, files, e-mail, personal settings, favorites applications. It’s like having our own personal operating system we can carry in our pocket. PenDriveLinux.com shows how to install Ubuntu, Knoppix and other Linux distribution installation on USB Drive. >>

SoftwareFor.org : Software for Students

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Software for Starving Students is a free software collection of programs organized specifically for students community. It consists of a great list of best-in-class programs onto one CD for OS X and one for Windows, including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities. >>

Clocky, The Hide-And-Seek Clock

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Clocky is a funny clock which runs away and hides when we don't wake up at the specified time. Clocky gives us one chance to get up. But if we snooze, Clocky will jump off of our nightstand and wheel around our room looking for a place to hide. Its screen flashes when beeping/running. Clocky is kind of like a misbehaving pet, only he will get up at the right time. Only way to stop him... disable his wheels. It costs around $49.99. >>

CryptoBox : Web-based Data Encryption Tool

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The CryptoBox brings easy-to-use data encryption to our computer. It is targeted at users who want to set up an encrypting file server without bothering about complicated administration issues. A computer which runs the CryptoBox-CD works as a network-attached storage [NAS], with the ability to encrypt all stored data. >>

Sizer : Window Resizing Tool

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Sizer is a free utility that allows us to resize any window to an exact, predefined size. This is extremely useful when designing web pages, as it allows us to see how the page will look when viewed at a smaller size. The utility is also handy when compiling screen-shots for documentation, using Sizer allows us to easily maintain the same window size across screen grabs. >>

WebWait : Measuring Our Website Speed

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WebWait allows us to measure and benchmark web performance of our websites. It's timing seems to be accurate as WebWait pulls down the entire website into our browser, so it takes into account Ajax/Javascript processing and image loading, which many other benchmarking tools ignore. >>

Biological Science Goes Open Source

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World's famous drug giant companies are finding that the genetic research is worth more to them if they give it away. Novartis, has helped uncover which of the 20,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project are likely to be associated with diabetes. But rather than hoard this information, as drug firms have traditionally done, it is making it available for free on the World Wide Web. Few other companies like Pfizer has also promised to make available for free a swath of genetic information emerging from three-year collaboration with the National Institutes of Health. >>

Gspace : Gmail Drive Firefox Extension

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Gspace is a Firefox extension, similar to Gmail Drive. It turns the 2GB of our Gmail account into free online storage. With Gspace we can manage unlimited Gmail accounts to store all type of files within its simple, user friendly interface. We can manage our Music files, photos and other important document using this drive. >>

MUX : Any-to-Any Video Format Conversion Service

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MUX is an any-to-any video conversion service which converts any video links which are in WMV, MP4, FLV, MOV, or YouTube videos. We can specify the size, bitrate, and frames per second of our converted output video. It also has a separate version for mobile called MUX Mobile through which we can convert video and sent directly to our mobile phone in 3GP format. >>

Wink : Free Tutorial and Presentation Creation Tool

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Wink is a Flash-based Tutorial and Presentation creation software which primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software. Using Wink we can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for our software users. We can also record voice as we create the tutorial for explaining better and supports many languages. It's all for FREE! >>

RocketDock : Apple Mac like Launcher for Windows

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RocketDock is an amazing animated application launcher very similar to the Apple Mac launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. We can fully customize each item and their positions. It brings quick access to our application shortcuts in an organized fashion relieving our desktop clutters. >>

Mobile MySpace

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MySpace is about to launch mobile social networking in europe through Vodafone networks. The service will launch first in the UK and then be rolled out to other European regions, thought to include Germany, France and Italy. Users of MySpace will be able to edit profiles, find and add friends, post photos and blogs as well as send and receive MySpace messages. >>

Nokia's smart2go Mapping : Sharing Favourite Spots with Friends

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Nokia has announced a navigation platform called smart2go mapping, which allows mapping and routing in over 150 countries and has support for full turn-by-turn satellite navigation in over 30 countries for free. The platform shows over 15 million points of interest that help to people explore the most interesting sights, restaurants, or accommodations around them, and send them to friends via MMS, Bluetooth, infrared, or e-mail. >>

Mars Robot for Our Home !

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SRV-1 Mobile Robot lets us to explore the dangerous terrain of our home or office. This palm sized robot packs tank-like treads, a 32-bit ARM processor and a mini video camera. It includes wireless transmitter interfaces via USB with any PC up to 300 feet away. The Java based host software supports Windows, Mac or Linux OS and features a built-in web server to monitor and control the SRV-1 Robot with a web browser anywhere in the world.

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Live video from the robot updates at a few frames per second and runs at resolutions of up to 320 x 240. The built in proximity sensors can be toggled on or off to assist when driving the robot manually. Multiple users can watch the live video feed from the robot without having access to control it. >>

Video Games are Good for Eyes !

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The University of Rochester study has showed that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved their vision by about 20 percent. According to the report, action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information. These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. >>

MapServer : Building GIS Enabled Internet applications

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MapServer is an Open Source development environment for building GIS enabled internet applications. It excels at rendering spatial datas like maps, images, and vector data. MapServer allows us to create geographic image maps, which can direct users to content. >>

4 Simple Features I Need in Google Blogger !

I am one of the happy :) Google’s Blogger users since 2004. I just love its simple and real user friendliness; after all it’s part of Google. Each day I am experimenting and trying out new things with Blogger.

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Some times I feel the need of some changes or feature improvements in Blogger Platform. Here I am listing out just four simple features or changes I need in Google’s Blogger.

Improvement in Preview Option

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The Blogger’s preview feature seems to provide preview only for the Main page. Suppose if I am changing my template or adding any ads in the comments section. The preview option doesn’t seem to be work in the comments part. I have to save the template, only after that I can see my changes.

Changes made in the comments section can’t be previewed using ‘Preview’ option.

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Due to this, each time I have to save the template, to see my changes. It really takes some time as each time I have to save and publish to see how my changes would look.

I want to see all the functionality to work and previewed in the Preview mode, not just the main part of the page.


Need for Backup Support


Backup is the major feature needs some good support. Blogger doesn’t have any inbuilt backup tools. I am just wondering how such a popular Blogging platform could miss such a most wanted feature.

Currently if I want to backup my blog, the only way as officially provided by Blogger is, I have to remove my current template and replace it with Blogger’s backup code.

Checkout what Blogger officially says about Backup:

Blogger does not have an export or download function. However, you can use the following instructions to create a single file with all your posts which you may publish and then copy to your own computer for use as desired. Note: If you intend to continue using your blog, please save a copy of your existing template in a file on your computer as you will need to have it at hand after this process is completed.

Checkout the full official blogger’s backup steps

I have a question, why should I change my blog template to backup my Blog. I feel Blogger has more user base of non-techie and newbie users, I am very sure they wont feel comfortable with this Blogger’s current backup process.

There are some unofficial Blogger Backup tools like Codeplex’s “Blogger Backup utility ”, but I am not much confident about the reliability of such utilities. Such tools needs us to provide our Google Blogger account username and password [!?] to backup our blog.



 click to see the full size image

[click to see the full size image]


I think Google must provide some inbuilt simple to use Blogger Backup utility, which I have expected in the current new Blogger Beta.


Navbar Customizing


This is the most talked issue among the Blogger’s community, whether to hide it or not?. Some Bloggers hide them and some are not sure whether to remove them.

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I could see in the Blogger’s official blog, “Blogger Buzz ”, the Navbar seems to be customized by removing their blog's “Flag” option.



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[click to see the full size image]




I feel Blogger should also give us the feature to customize our Navbar, So that the user can make a choice of having the Navbar, Flag option or any other features.

MORE STABLE

Please Google, make Blogger Moooooore stable; it is the one of the most used Google service [actually I want to put this point, as the first one].

You know it well, so I am not going much deep in this one.

There are big bunch of Blogger lovers like me, so please take some extra care.

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Thanks Blogger

Balakumar Muthu


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Age-o-Matic : See What Your Job is Doing to You!

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Checkout what your job is doing to you with Careerbuilder's Age-o-Matic, which lets us to load a photograph, answer a few choice questions and then it shows us the results on the same personal photograph, which is digitally altered to include bald pates, wrinkles and gray skin to look what our your job is doing to you! >>

Many Eyes : IBM's Human Visual Intelligence Tool

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IBM's Many Eyes lets democratize visualization, enabling anyone on the Internet to publish powerful interactive visualizations and start our own data conversations to harness the collective intelligence of the net for insight and analysis. We can upload our data in the form of Excel spreadsheets or tab-delimited text files for data visualization. >>


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