A new tool seeks to make your searches more private by hiding them in plain sight.

TrackMeNot periodically sends fake, innocuous queries to search engines, making it harder for someone to glean your actual search habits by reviewing the companies’ logs that contain your queries.

The tool comes as AOL revealed it had released the search histories of more than 650,000 subscribers. Although user names were not included, the company admitted that the search terms themselves could contain sensitive information. Two AOL employees were fired and a third resigned over the disclosure.

The tool, developed by two researchers at New York University, sends random searches, such as “boston clock” and “croissant,” to the four largest search engines - Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and AOL. A fake search is made, on average, every 12 seconds under default configurations; the tool can generate millions of unique queries from its list, and users can add their own.

Consumers will have to wait until the end of January for Windows Vista if the availability for the OS listed on Amazon.com’s Web site is accurate.

On Web pages taking pre-orders for consumer versions of Vista, Amazon.com lists January 30, 2007, as the date the OS will be shipping.

Amazon.com lists prices for the three consumer versions of Windows Vista–Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, and Windows Vista Ultimate–as well as for Windows Vista Business edition. Pricing for upgrades to each of the editions also is listed on the site.

According to Amazon.com, Windows Vista Home Basic will cost $199 for a new copy and $100 for an upgrade.

The search giant has stumbled lately, but its popular Q&A service shows that getting people to create their own content can really pay off.

There are a few clouds gathering around Yahoo these days. The Internet star’s delay in rolling out a crucial new advertising system sideswiped its stock price in July, and investors remain jittery about its prospects against Google, Microsoft, and other rivals.

But one ray of sunshine is beaming at the company’s Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters: Yahoo Answers.

An online Q&A service, Yahoo Answers has become the second most popular Internet reference site after Wikipedia, according to Comscore. In June, Yahoo Answers attracted 12.3 million unique visitors, a 35 percent spike from the previous month. (For comparison, media sensation YouTube had 13.4 million visitors in June.) During the same period, 947,000 people clicked on Google Answers, down 4 percent from May.

The secret to Yahoo Answers’s success?

Gmail is headed for the office - officially.

Starting Monday, Google will offer Google Apps for Your Domain, a free package of programs for businesses, universities and other organizations.

Workers will be able to send e-mail with Gmail, Google’s two-year-old Web-based mail service, but messages will carry their company’s domain name. The package also includes Google’s online calendar, instant-messaging service, and Page Creator, a Web page builder.

Information technology administrators can make some customizations. “But really, the applications are exactly what you’d experience as a consumer if you use them,” said Dave Girouard, VP and general manager of Google Enterprise, a division of Google Inc.

The free edition of Apps for Your Domain is, like Google’s main site, supported with ads. By the end of the year, the company also plans to launch a paid version that will offer more storage, some degree of support, and likely, no ads. A price for this edition hasn’t been set.

Providing e-mail and other applications for businesses moves Google closer into what has traditionally been turf occupied by Microsoft Corp. Earlier this year, Google released a program that builds simple Excel-type spreadsheets but lets users access them on the Web.

Reality TV turns nobodies into stars. Spoof Internet music videos garner millions of viewers.

Television executives and program makers faced up to an uncomfortable truth Saturday at the Edinburgh International Television Festival: In the age of interactive television and user-generated online content, just about anyone can be a star.

The phenomenon is especially pronounced in Britain, where the fiercely competitive tabloid press requires a constant supply of celebrities — A-list, B-list, C-list and below.

“We don’t really care how they became famous,” said Boyd Hilton, television editor of Heat, the country’s top celebrity magazine.

The rise of the instant star and the increasingly ephemeral nature of celebrity pose a challenge to television’s traditional measures of talent. So it’s no surprise that one of the most popular sessions at the Edinburgh festival was a panel discussion — titled “Don’t You Know Who I am?” — that examined the changing nature of celebrity.