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:

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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...”

Hello Yahoo!, Simple Features or Changes I need in Flickr and Del.icio.us !!

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Hello Yahoo!,

I am one of the regular user and lover of Flickr and Del.icio.us services. Whenever I am working of these web applications, I used to feel the need of some simple changes in them.

The features or changes, I am going to list out here are nothing new and we have already seen them in most of the web applications. These changes to Flickr and Del.icio.us will definitely enhance the usability of these web services.

Lets look into Flickr First

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When finding a Photo, I would like to have the “TagSuggest” Feature, which lists down the tags related to the search term currently I am typing.

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In the main Flickr page there are two-search options are provided in the top of the page, one in the top right [1] and one in the top center after the main menu [2].


 click to see the full size image

[click to see the full size image]



When I scroll down to the page end, I don’t have any search option. Each time I have to scroll to top of the page for searching.

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I think the Search option has to be provided also in the page down too, as shown below so that I don’t have to scroll up each time for doing new search.

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When I select a picture and clicked on the option “All Sizes” for getting different sizes of the particular picture.

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I am taken to the different available photo size page; I am missing some of the most important features in the page.




 click to see the full size image

[click to see the full size image]




The top Main menu [1] is missing, due to that I can’t come to home directly from this page.

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The Search option [2] is missing, so I can’t perform new search from this page.

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I find no option to Sign out [3] Flickr from this page; to sign out I have to return back to the previous page.


The only way to do get all this functions explained above is, we have to return back to the previous page, clicking on the “Back to the Flickr Photo Page” option.

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Finally the Flickr logo [4] too is missing in this page.

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I could understand the Flickr logo image is not used in this page, for the faster download of the different size of the pictures, but other options like the “Top Main menu”, “Search” and “Sign out” must be included in all pages.


When I want to delete more than one photo at a time, I don’t have an option for this. I can select only one photo at a time to delete them; suppose I want to delete more than 30 photos, will I have to select each photo individually to delete?. I think it is very long process, instead I need option for multi selection checkbox to select and delete multiple images in a single click.

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Flickr works GREAT in its core functionalities like to store, search, sort, and share photos wonderfully. Flickr has came out of beta, now it’s in gamma ;) so I expect more advance Image editing features like:


Resizing photos, not the default fixed sizes provided by Flickr. I want to resize the image to the size I want.

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Option to blur, sharpen, straighten the image

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Color effects like Grayscale, Sepia, Invert, Red, Green, and Blue

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Some other special effects like

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I could find all the features are available in http://pixer.us, Flickr please give us such great features or better acquire them simple :).


I want Flickr not just as a Photo storing, tagging and sharing application, but as a powerful Full-fledged Image Management Web Application.


Next, I just move on direct to Del.icio.us for few things

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In the Del.icio.us home page, just next and right to the “hotlist” header the link option “see also: popular recent” is not notable in a single instance. I think the font size of this links has to be increased or needs to have some light gray background to make this links notable even in single look. It need some change as shown below.

The normal link background

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Needs to be changed to light gray to increase its notability.

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Next, the Login process seems to be taking quite some time, I think the login form can be placed in the home page itself. When I click on the login [1] link on the top of the page, I want the login form to be loaded in the “Tags” block [2] area as show below.

When clicking the “login” link [1]

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The login form can be loaded in the “Tags” [2] block area as shown below

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I could understand, currently when we login we are taken to the “htts:// ” secure page, What I ask is why not the secure login is loaded in the same page without reloading and you know very well what technology you have to use for this process :).

Currently, each time when I am logging in I have to move to 2 pages before I actually logged in as shown below:

Login page [page 1]

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Login successful, redirects to the logged in user [page 2]


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- !End -


All the features or changes, I have discussed above seems to be very simple, but they are valid and It will definitely enhance the usability of these applications more.

Although I have more and more such suggestions in mind, I am ending this post for now.

Do drop in your comments when you have time.

Thanks Yahoo!! :).

--
Balakumar Muthu



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My Similar Posts:

http://i5bala.blogspot.com/2006/07/highly-confusing-invalid-error-message.html

http://i5bala.blogspot.com/2006/06/design-and-usability-issueserrors-in.html




4 Comments:

At 8:45 PM, Blogger Adiya said...
hi i5B..

thats grt8 use-ability research. hopefully yahoo grabs all ur ideas :)
u might be knowings just check out..

http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/
 
At 10:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
just out of curiosity.... why would you want to blur an image?
 
At 2:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...
Flickr?

http://www.zooomr.com

del.icio.us?

http://www.blinklist.com

;-)
 
At 6:14 PM, Blogger balakumar said...
@adiya, thanks dude, I have seen zoo-m.com, its collections a amazying... thanks for pointing :)

@prashanth, blur is one of the feature I use frequently, as I do with sharpen for some images. Blur is used to convey a sense of motion in the picture.


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