By Jasper Foo and Kenneth Pek

If you are an athlete competing in a foreign land for two weeks and cannot speak the language, who do you go to for help? Well, if you're a Youth Olympic Games athlete, fret not, you have the Digital Concierge.

Here in Singapore, every youth athlete and official is given a Samsung-sponsored mobile phone. And installed in every phone are nine software applications that help cater to a sportsman's needs.

1.' Youth Olympic Village (YOV)'
With so many facilities and services available, any information about the YOV is just a touch of a button away.

If the athletes feel hungry, they can find out where and what time meals will be provided. If they need a break from training and want to have a game of pool with friends, they can find out the operating hours.

2. 'Culture & Education'
With the Culture and Education Programme (CEP), athletes can dance to traditional songs, or be treated to performances such as street dance, street circus, fire-eating and roving puppet acts by the native people. A good opportunity for cultural exchange.

3. 'Fun & Promotion'
The phone has been preinstalled with videos relating to YOG, a music video of the theme song, advertisements, and YOG ringtones like 'Everyone'. Athletes can watch or listen to them whenever they are bored, especially when travelling from place to place.

4. 'News'
Being away from home and caught up at the Games, athletes can still keep in touch with current affairs with this application that consists of news from the official YOG website and other major news sites.

5. 'Venues'
This is a one-stop application that contains all information about the venues, from competition and training to CEP venues. Pictures of the venue and some quick facts are also provided so that athletes know more about the place.

6. 'Sport Competition'
Whenever athletes and officials need relevant information about the game, such as names of officials and competitors, they will be able to turn to this application to find out what they need. It aims to keep athletes and officials connected by keeping both sides informed.

7. 'Results & Start List'
Because of the many different training and competition timings, it is impossible for the youths and officials to catch the games live. So instead of having to go down to the venues for the results, they have access to the latest updates at the competition venues.

Keeping in mind that there are over 200 competitions venues, scrolling through the list to find one venue on a small screen can be rather tedious. To tackle this problem, the phone programmers came up with the idea of personalising the phone.

If this phone is meant to be given to a swimmer, he will by default, see the entire swimming schedule.

He also has the option of viewing results by the sport or date.

8. 'Explore Singapore'
While they are here for the sporting event, athletes can get an overview of the YOG host country through this application. It brings them fast facts about Singapore and information on places of interest such as Sentosa and the Esplanade.

9. 'Contact Us'
When a non-English speaking athlete has difficulty communicating with someone, help is on the way with this useful application.

Just by a touch of the screen, a call will be made to a translator and whatever the athlete wants to say will be conveyed.

So in the event that a Spanish athlete does not know how to speak English and needs to take a taxi to a training venue, he can click on this application and get in contact with a Spanish translator, who will help him relate the message to the taxi driver.

Last but not least
This is, after all, a phone.

Naturally it comes with messaging and local calling functions, and the best part is, they are free.

The phone has become the athlete's handy, portable, personal assistant - one that is reliable and sends important reminders.

"I think it is very practical, very good and very easy to use, we can have all the information on the score of our teams. It is important for us because at our venues there is no internet connection for us so this concierge is good in getting news about our friends," said Demey Benoit, an 18-year-old rower from France.

And here is the bonus - the phone is his for keeps.

The writers are student reporters from Republic Polytechnic's Diploma in Communication & Information Design (DCID). They will be working with AsiaOne and Edvantage, bringing you stories from the 2010 Youth Olympic Games.

For more Youth Olympic Games stories, click here.