I'm struggling to compress ten years of online history from the mainstream user's perspective into a readable account, and the only way to do it seems to be to use AOL as a lense.  But wandering around online looking for the right stories to tell (AOL and otherwise) has been rewarding. 

Netcraft has great web server surveys accompanied by cheerful narratives.  They're seeing "dramatic growth" in server numbers, and it may be explained in part by "the explosive growth of weblogs."  The growth is also likely explained in part by greater numbers of speculators hoping that people will miss-type domain names. 

Business 2.0 doesn't have an online archive; Red Herring does; Wired does; and the Pew Internet Project reports are great. But, boy, I could use some pointers to your favorite Joe Consumer perspective online history sources.  (The part after consumers piled on and ruined everything for the people who had really been enjoying themselves and actually writing code. Although maybe consumers will start writing code themselves someday.)  What has it been like for people who don't usually read Wired? (This is a plea for help -- if you feel shy or the comment registration system doesn't work for you (it often doesn't), send me an email.)

I did a podcast interview today with Ernie Miller and Phil Weiser on BrandX, but -- it won't be available for a couple of weeks.  What happened to internet time?  At any rate, a good time was had by all.

[update, 20 days later:  podcast is here]