Olympics go mobile: Following the game on your smart phone or iPod Touch

iPhone (and iPod Touch) apps

The following apps are available from the iTunes app store:

• The free NBC Olympics app (see photo) provides schedules, real-time updates on all events, news, alerts, and video clips. You can also post articles, photos, and messages on Facebook and Twitter.

• The free Official Guide app from the Vancouver Organizing Committee is geared toward those attending the Olympics in person. It features schedules, non-sporting events (including dance, film, theater, comedy, and musical events) in both Vancouver and Whistler (the latter is where bobsled and luge events are held), news, and the ability to follow at least 11 Olympic-related Twitter accounts.

• The free CTV Olympics Guide app, from Canada's largest TV network, offers headlines, photos galleries, schedules, and maps of event venues. There's a neat feature where you can view profiles of individual athletes by country for any of roughly 30 nations (the default is, of course, Canada).

• Another free app, the NBC Olympics Cheer, lets you listen to Olympic-themed cheering sounds from cowbells to whistles, winter sports sounds, and submit your own "Team USA" cheers. This app won't run on an iPod Touch, because it requires a microphone.

I found at least two Olympics-related apps for sale at prices ranging from 99 cents to $2.99, though it's not immediately obvious why they're worth paying for, when you can get so much from the above free apps.

Android apps

The Android Market listed a small group of apps, but nothing from NBC, the Olympic Committee, or CTV. Most just offer updated medal counts.

The free Vancouver Olympics app offers news from the official Olympic Committee, NBC, and other sources. What it did when I tried it was display a list of headlines, then browse the Web pages for whichever headline I chose. The 99-cent app, Olympics News, did nearly the same thing. I don't see much point in paying for apps like these, when you can easily bookmark and browse the Olympics-related sites for free on your own.

Olympic Web sites

Here are some useful Web sites to browse to get Olympics news:

• The NBC Olympic site
• CBS Sports
• The official Olympic Committee site
• EPSN
• Facebook
• Twitter (Also search on hash codes #olympics and #vancouver2010)

To find Olympic athletes to follow on Twitter, surf to Twitter-Athletes.

If you have any favorite Olympic sites or apps, tell us about them below.

–Jeff Fox

—Jeffrey Fox