The activist group called “anonymous,” best known for its jousts with the Church of Scientology, has apparently hacked into the private Yahoo e-mail account of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president. Contents of that account, including two sample e-mails, an index of messages and Palin family photos, have been posted by the whistleblower site Wikileaks, which contends that they constitute evidence that Palin has improperly used her private e-mail to shield government business from public scrutiny, an issue that had already been raised by others.

Yahoo Inc is moving ahead on Thursday with a radical redesign of its home page — the most heavily trafficked site on the Web — making changes that give users a personalized view of the wider Web.

The Internet media giant is under the gun to deliver on year-old promises to transform Yahoo from a network of more or less insular properties into “starting points” that help consumers quickly navigate their way to the rest of the Web.

“We are going to put what matters to you most at your fingertips,” said Tapan Bhat, the senior vice president in charge of “front doors” — the main destinations at Yahoo, including Yahoo.com, MyYahoo and the Yahoo toolbar.

The new Yahoo home page features a tab on the left hand column of the page with sophisticated links to the user’s 10 or 20 favorite sites. It functions as an alternative to navigation methods like bookmarks, link bars or browser tabs, he said.

In its simplest sense, Yahoo is blending the broadcast, editorially-controlled view that Yahoo.com has long offered with the personalized, self-selected view of information that the company’s MyYahoo service has long offered. It mixes things users know they want, with the serendipitous or unexpected.

“For the first time, we are going to marrying those two to take the best of both,” Bhat promised.