The Economist, July 2002:

IT WAS an essential ingredient of dotcom business plans and conference slide-shows: Internet traffic, went the industry's favourite statistic, doubles every 100 days.... Unfortunately for the telecoms firms that rushed to build networks to carry the reported surge in traffic, it wasn't true.

So where did the claim come from? According to Andrew Odlyzko...the short answer is WorldCom.

Technorati founder Dave Sifry, August 2006:

The blogosphere has been doubling in size every 6 months or so. It is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.

(Okay, let's be fair, Sifry says the growth will eventually slow. Right after Technorati gets sold to Fox or Viacom.)

The power of WorldCom's puff [Economist]
State of the Blogosphere, August 2006 [Sifry's Alerts]
Kevin Burton: The Numbers Don't Lie [OnoTech]

Oh dear, I just did a Canter in the [redacted] presentation.

In the sense of "fell asleep in an orange shirt." Not "smoked dope first and heckled incoherently."

Or "hit on any woman present, then when told she's a lesbian suggested a threesome with my wife."

Or "hired a series of programmers and forgot to pay them."

Here's what Canter replied:

Clearly Valleywag has set new levels of blogging integrity.

I sure would like to know who claims that I asked them to do work - and refused to pay them?

Just sayin'.

Is this what blogging has stooped to? [Marc's blog]
Photo: Marc Canter gone wild [Robert Scales on Flickr]

You know, I just — I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet...I hope I — I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't — you just put me under the spot here...

Soon-to-retire Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates:

I would not change a thing. Sure, we've made mistakes along the way but every one of those has been a chance to learn and do things better.

Presidential press conference, 13 April 2004 [WhiteHouse.gov]
Q&A: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer [Silicon.com]

Thirty-six hours after AOL's "Digg killer" launches, this is still the site's top story, with three times the votes of any other.

Netscape beta
Earlier: AOL copies Digg [Valleywag]

Arrington, did you rent TechCrunch office space in the city?

• Lousy OS
• No phone
• No Wi-Fi
• No TV-out
• Poor business model

Causes not listed:

• Hiring a Ferrari crasher

Reflections: Gizmondo today is no more [MS Mobile]