beSpacific calls it “an amazing legislative tracking service,” and for good reason. Developed by Joshua Tauberer, a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, GovTrack recently won the grand prize in the Technorati Developer’s Contest for developing a way to show what bloggers are saying about bills as they work their way through Congress.

But GovTrack monitors much more than bloggers. It tracks the status of federal legislation, the speeches of representatives on the House and Senate floors, voting records, campaign contribution summaries and more. Even better, you can define the issues you want to follow and then receive updates by e-mail or RSS feed. GovTrack gets its information from THOMAS and the U.S. Senate and U.S. House Web sites.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.