Chris Lyman tried to live a life of leisure. After selling the start-up company he had founded, Hosting.com, for $30 million in 2000, Mr. Lyman, then 26, bought a big house on a bluff above Los Angeles. He bought a $100,000 sports car. He splurged on heliboarding trips, extreme diving and “other primordial male, risky stuff,” he said. In between, there were plenty of days where 4 p.m. rolled around and he was still in his bathrobe. Yet no more. Like many other young techies who came into an elephantine payoff during the Internet era, Mr. Lyman has chosen to start another company — mainly because he felt he had no choice.

Having already struck it rich, many young Internet tycoons throw themselves back into a start-up, in a competition with one another and themselves.

Skype's new cell phone will deliver mobile access to its service. The beleaguered carrier hopes to jump-start revenues overseas by Bruce Meyerson Bit by bit, big names in the computing world are barging into the cell-phone business. First came Apple's (AAPL) game-changing iPhone. Next came word that Google (GOOG) is creating its own software platform for a new breed of cell phones. Now Skype (EBAY), which popularized free and cheap phone calls over the Internet, is set to launch a customized cell phone developed jointly with 3 Mobile, a wireless carrier in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

How many people visited Style.com, the online home of Vogue and W magazines, last month? Was it 421,000, or, more optimistically, 497,000? Or was the real number more than three times higher, perhaps 1.8 million? The answer — which may be any, or none, of the above — is a critical one for Condé Nast, which owns the site, and for companies like Ralph Lauren, which pay to advertise there. Condé Nast’s internal count (1.8 million) was much higher than the tally by ComScore (421,000) or Nielsen/NetRatings (497,000), whose numbers are used to help set advertising rates, and the discrepancies have created a good deal of friction.

Music and TV were lazily paddling their canoes down Prosperity Creek when Music suddenly heard a deafening roar ahead. “Help! What’s happening?” cried Music — but it was too late. The canoe tumbled over the Internet Falls, knocking Music upside-down into the churning vortex. TV, following at a short distance, was determined to avoid Music’s fate. “I shall go with the current and not fight it,” vowed TV. And with only seconds to spare, TV threw every shred of brainpower and muscle into avoiding its doom. End of Chapter 1.

Yossi Vardi is one of the people I’ve had the pleasure to get to know since starting TechCrunch. You can find him at technology events worldwide - just look for the smiling, wild-haired guy surrounded by a pack of people.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 7 — For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google has been working in secret on a mobile phone project. As word about their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists ahead of a speech by Steven P. Jobs.

As the power of the Internet grows, businesses small and large find themselves confounded by disenchanted employees, suppliers and competitors who seek fertile ground to air grievances online. Armed with little more than a Web connection and a keyboard, these detractors can do everything from irritate, via a scathing review, to causing serious business problems by using message boards to reveal company secrets or spread rumors of unethical behavior. They may also start a gripe site or register a Web address in their target’s name.

The New York Times has just abandoned its two-year effort to charge for content online, taking down TimesSelect, the pay wall around its columnists and much of its archives. So content is now and forever free. That isn't because people won't pay for content - some did. It's because there is a new economy of content online that isn't built on scarcity and control but instead relies on the idea that content must be public and permanent to realise its value in the wider conversation.

I'm deep in a quandary. A couple of days ago, after calling Adblock Plus "the nuclear plug-in," I actually went nuclear. I downloaded the sucker and started using it. I was seduced by Noam Cohen's description of the almost Zenlike sense of peace that flowed through him when he'd outfitted Firefox with the ad-eating add-on: