CNetNews.com reports that “

[t]he top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee is requesting detailed information, including financial figures, from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to explain why the department has been seemingly unable to fulfill its cybersecurity responsibilities.  In a letter sent to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on Tuesday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that in light of the recent resignation of National Cybersecurity Center Director Rod Beckström, she would like DHS to send the Homeland Security Committee a number of documents to show how the department spent its $6 million NCSC budget and provided other means of support for the NCSC.”

Yahoo!News writes that “[f]aced with a torrent of complaints over its latest redesign, the social networking hub Facebook has vowed a series of ‘improvements’ to eliminate clutter and make the website more user friendly.  ‘Since we launched Facebook's home page design, we've received thousands of emails, Wall posts and comments from you along with direct feedback from all of our friends and family,’ product director Christopher Cox said in a blog post late Tuesday.  Cox pointed to several areas ‘where we're focusing on improvements immediately and over the next several weeks,’ after the site earlier this month introduced a busier, twitter-like feed on its popular networking site.”

Yahoo!Tech also has an interesting interview with Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, on the impact of cloud computing.

In more cloud computing news, the Register has a great discussion on the security challenges inherent in accessing systems and data by way of the Internet.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Google Inc. made two changes to its search results pages Tuesday that it said would help more effectively direct users to the information they were seeking.  The search engine giant said it was launching a technology to better understand what people were looking for online. It also will give longer lines of text, or snippets, after the search title, with relevant words in bold.”