As the amount of information available online increases and people become more reliant upon the Internet for information, technology companies are developing new features for search engines that can process an incomprehensible amount of data into organized, user-friendly results. New search features are constantly developed to deliver targeted results and ultimately make Internet research as efficient as possible.

he New York Times reported yesterday that despite reduced budgets, big media companies such as Hearst and the Associated Press continue to fund FOIA appeals and lawsuits.

With the ever-increasing availability of freely accessible government datasets, developers are seizing opportunities to reprogram these public records into Internet applications that are more relevant for the general public. One such trend is hyperlocal news web sites, such as EveryBlock. EveryBlock aggregates (and makes searchable) civic information from multiple public records dataset.

In the past week, Maryland Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller Jr. and House Speaker Michael E. Busch have announced that Maryland legislative committee level votes will be posted online within a few days after they are cast. Maryland is following several other states in making committee level votes readily available to the public.

States are taking notice of newer forms of "record-less" electronic communications that may circumvent public records laws. Blackberry PIN messaging is drawing scrutiny when used by officials whose correspondence is otherwise subject to open records release and retention.

An institution that receives a majority of its funding from the state is typically then subject to state freedom of information laws. Following is an overview of each state's law regarding requesting public records from publicly funded institutions.

When a public record is not easily accessible from its government location, a secondary search strategy is to look for the document in an online, open source database. These document warehouses often have comprehensive categories to which anyone can upload relevant documents and resources, so you may even be able to find things that are not traditionally available as public records.

Yesterday, the White House released a directive with instructions and deadlines for executive departments and agencies for implementing the goals set forth in President Obama's January 21 Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. It lists specific plans to be completed in time frames ranging from 45 to 120 days.

Today's New York Times includes an in interesting article discussing how municipal governments are starting to release obscure public records datasets to Internet and software developers. These programmers are finding new applications for the data, and creating websites that make the information more useable and interesting to the general population.

When responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, sometimes agencies provide unsatisfactory or untimely responses. In such cases, start by evaluating the basis of the denial and then move toward making an appeal of the agency determination.

We recently posted news of Carl Malamud's effort to make access to the federal court records contained in the PACER system available at no cost to the general public. Now comes news that the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University has created a PACER Firefox add-on called RECAP.

Google recently announced that its Caffeine search upgrade will be activated following several months of user testing.