According to most predictions – including mine – the next generation of the Internet will be three-dimensional, fully immersive, a multi-media smorgasbord for the senses.

I love the fact that there are always two kids of everything in the world… the binary system is so neat and orderly.
There are two kinds of grammarians: the prescriptivists and the descriptivists. The prescriptivists lay down the rules, then want other people to follow them. When someone splits an infinitive, for example, or ends [...]

My theory is, in China, the higher up you are the less work you do — poor people on farms, in mines work the hardest.
If you’re unemployed you scramble the hardest to feed yourself and family.
In the US and Europe, the poorest people don’t work at all, get subsidies, the highest-paid people work super [...]

In the past, wars were fought over resources. The definition of power was the ability to collect a great deal of physical wealth — land, gold, slaves — and order people to work on your behalf to get you more.
Two rulers would go to war and the winner would have more of everything at the [...]

Back in the old days … 2004 … we had to buy our foreign-language books in hotel shops — and had as many as five different novels to choose from, if we were lucky, right next to the tour guides and “Your first 1,000 Chinese characters” and “Chinese in 1 million easy lessons.”
There were fake [...]

A Massachusetts court signed off on my divorce last week - after about three years of separation in which my ex and I weren’t in the States long enough at the same time to get it done.
This means that, on January 30, I officially become Maria Victoria Korolov again. And I am never changing my [...]

I’ve finally found a system that works for keeping my inbox at a manageable size (one screen or less), a variation of the GTD system.
Step 1: Do I need to respond to this email?
Many emails are sent to me for my reference — or are spam. If they’re spam, I lick Gmail’s spam button and [...]

I believe that, on average, the sharper your focus, the further you will get in life — whether in your career, your business, your hobbies, or anything else you’re after.
Unfortunately, picking a career is no easier than picking a mate — no matter how attractive your spouse, there will always be other people who are [...]

Sorry about not posting last month — it was a busy, busy May. The company continues to grow — and new people have to be trained, new clients dealt with.
I was on local TV — the International Channel Shanghai — and taped the first episode of a new ITV-Asia program, Emerging China, for which I’m [...]

When people find out that I’m a business journalist, they invariably ask me for stock tips.
After all, I’m probably sitting on tons of juicy corporate insider dope that my editors won’t print so as not to offend advertisers, right?
First of all, not true. Any inside dope I’ve got, has been printed. I’ve been lucky with [...]