We've been working hard on our first iPhone and Android apps since December and I wanted to give you a sneak peek of where we are.

Front Row

Our first fan app will be called "Front Row." This is an institution- or conference-specific app that is available in Apple's App Store and in Google Play and will be geared towards smartphones.  We see Front Row as the app-of-choice for your die-hard fans who want to quickly get to their favorite team's live event coverage.

Every site will continue to have MobileNow, a comprehensive HTML 5 mobile version that is geared for the casual and visiting fans.

We are currently piloting the first version of these apps with four clients in a closed beta program. These should go public this summer as we continue to work out how we'll be rolling out updates and planning what goes in the next few versions of this app.

How much?

We're not sure yet. The biggest challenge we have is working out how we're going to manage hundreds of customer apps in Apple and Google stores and how frequently we will be updating the app. Windows has also recently launched a new mobile platform that is extremely compelling and will likely be a third platform that these apps need to run on.

This summer we hope to have more experience with that process and can announce our final pricing for our apps.

Anything else cooking?

We're also working on a mobile app to give you some of the functionality of the PrestoSports admin system. This will start with basic score reporting and social media sharing tools, but will gradually look to incorporate photo and video submissions and otherwise make it easier to push content to your fans.

We have added live stats in Front Row and MobileNow and are working on getting full season statistics with mobile-friendly layouts and support for gestures.

We're working on adding directions to MobileNow so that fans can easily know how far away they are from the event and how to get there quickly.  This will be the start of more geo-locational features in MobileNow and eventually Front Row.

We also keep staring at the accelerometer and GPS features to try to spark ideas on how that will impact you and your fans.

We look forward to seeing everyone at the tradeshows this summer so that we can show you how all of these apps are coming along.