Diversify Your Life - A Blog by Vijay Narayanan

" Cheap and reliable won't be fast , Fast and cheap won't be reliable , Fast and reliable won't be cheap ." The terms above...cheap, fast, reliable are all relative terms, meaning they vary from person to person. But I think we can all agree the above is true. "Cheap and reliable won't be fast." Example: my 1998 Acura Integra. I bought it in January 2009 as a college student, so could you say it was cheap in price? I think so. Here are some replacement repairs I did besides the regular maintenance items: stuck calipers, trunk actuator, blower motor, thermostat, front wheel bearings. Considering the car is nearly 15 years old (in Feb 2013), I would say the car has been reliable. But is the car fast at 140hp? You tell me. It gets me from A to B reliably. "Fast and cheap won't be reliable." Example: any modified car with cheap parts.  To avoid controversy, I won't call out any specific vehicle; rather I'll mention that f

When Facebook went public on May 18, 2012, there were two kinds of investors: those that jumped the gun and those that evaluated Facebook's profit model and decided to wait.  The IPO offering of FB was set at 38.00 and slowly spiraled downwards as the months went by, plummeting as low as 17.70 at one point in September 2012. Since the August 2012 time frame FB stock has been floating around the 18-21 mark. The stock price has dropped nearly 45% since the IPO. Facebook has struggles that it needs to overcome in order to satisfy investors and grow its profits. Is Facebook a necessity? Facebook began in 2004, around the time that Google decided to go public. By this time, Google was already establishing itself as the 800 lb. gorilla on the World Wide Web. In a world dominated by technology, Google has become a necessity both for personal and professional users. Although there is a rise in the number of Baby Boomers using Facebook in 2012, it does not come close to the number

Need to collaborate on a document with a friend? Need to help someone fix a software issue? Need to shop for something with a friend? Look no further, CrossLoop gets the job done. I found out about CrossLoop in an IT magazine a few years ago and finally came around to reviewing it. CrossLoop allows two users view-only and full control to each others' computers. There are two modes: Access and Share . It doesn't take rocket science to know that when one person shares, the other will access. Click the Share  tab (above right) and hit Connect  and provide your buddy with the 12-digit Access Code that they will enter in their Access tab (above left) . You will notice a red X :   this denotes that you will allow view-only access. Clicking again removes the X and allows full control. Besides the features that allows CrossLoop to succeed, what lies underneath the GUIs and functionalities? Security. As technology advances and people communicate across the Internet, hackers hav

What better way to end a near-5 month blog hiatus with a post calling out a scam? I noticed that my Facebook news feed was cluttered with nonsensical repetitions of a certain website. Certain Facebook friends do clutter my news feed with the trivial aspects of life as well as websites that achieve no purpose, but there was something that caught my attention. People are praising Southwest Airlines while sharing a link that redirects users to a website, which claims to send 2 FREE Southwest Airlines Tickets when re-sharing the link. How I came to the conclusion that it's a scam: The website claims that "The offer will expire Wednesday...or when the remaining 973 flight vouchers have been given out." The number then begins decreasing as if people are actually buying the vouchers; however, if you simply refresh the page, the number resets to 973 and begins counting down again. Not to mention the 1613 , indicating the number of users that have shared the link, also remain

G roupMe is an app for Android and iOS that allows you to keep in touch with multiple friends simultaneously via text messaging. In short, this app allows smartphone users to text a single reserved phone number to communicate with multiple users instead of manually sending a text message to each user. This reserved phone number is considered a "group", where users can co-exist and keep in touch. All you need is one person with the GroupMe app to create the group, and users in the group can see who is in the group or add others. The screenshot above (left) shows a text that you will receive when added to a group. The picture above (middle) shows how easy it is to add a member to the group. The newly added user will immediately be able to receive all the text messages exchanged on the GroupMe phone number. The #list command neatly lists all users in the group (right) . Bear in the mind that typing the commands with the '#' sign will only be sent to your p

This post is long overdue! Congratulations to myself for my "new" car purchase on May 7, 2011. I purchased a 2008 Lexus ISF with 16k miles on the odometer. Why a Lexus? Why automatic transmission? Why not another coupe? These questions along with others will be answered. It will not only be a review, but I will provide justifiable reasons for my purchase. Before I started car shopping I started falling in love (yes, like an infatuation) with numerous cars that were in my price range: Audi S5, Lotus Exige, 2006-07 BMW M6. However, these infatuations were short-lived. I had to decide on a car that was best for my wants and needs instead of blindly pursuing cars that were simply the 'apple of my eye' and nothing else. The Lexus ISF came the closest to meeting my wants and needs. Below I'll explain my wants and needs and how the ISF met them, and in some cases exceeded them: 1) Reliability. Japanese cars are known for this. I have been driving my 1998 A