Google’s Stealthy Helpouts Live Video Commerce Service Makes Its First Public Appearance, Landing Page Now Live

Last month, our own Rip Empson broke the news that Google was working on Helpouts, a Hangouts-based marketplace ” that enables individuals and small and large businesses to buy and sell services via live video.” Today, Helpouts made its first public appearance. The service’s homepage is now live and while it remains invite-only, its help pages are public and give us a closer look at what Helpouts will look like once it launches.

Google describes Helpouts as a way to allow professionals and experts to “share [their] knowledge with people who want to learn from [them] by giving a Helpout.”

The service obviously isn’t available yet, but Google says it is “currently inviting people with expertise across a number of topics to be able to offer Helpouts when we go live — and to make money sharing their skills and knowledge with the world.” Interested experts can already leave their names and email addresses to be included in the beta test.

According to the Helpouts Help pages, experts can choose to list their services under Home & Garden, Computers & Electronics, Health & Counseling, Nutrition & Fitness, Fashion & Beauty, Art & Music, Cooking and Education. Payments will be handles by Google Wallet.

In the document a source provided us earlier this year, health services were prominently featured in the screenshots and judging from the site that went live today, this is still a prominent feature of Helpouts. Google is working with HireRight – a provider of background-screening services – to ensure that the healthcare professionals who sign up for Helpouts are thoroughly vetted.

Google is also working with Infinity Contact, Capita Customer Management, and VXI to “provide customers with support and services related to Helpouts by Google.”

TechCrunch

Toronto’s Minuum Makes Its Beta Public, Android Users Can Try A New Kind Of Keyboard For $3.99 Now

University of Toronto-founded interaction design startup Whirlscape has made its beta available to the general public today, after a closed trial period following its successful Indiegogo funding campaign. Whirlscape’s first product is the MInuum Keyboard, a software input method that compresses a full QWERTY down to one line, opening up screen space while building in lots of text prediction to make it easy to type without thinking too much.

The Minuum project on Indiegogo raised $ 87,354, far exceeding its initial goal of just $ 10,000. Backers got early access to the keyboard app as a beta for Android, and now that pool of users is being broadened via the Google Play store. Whirlscape has decided to charge $ 3.99 for its app, even in beta form, which is a sure suggestion that it’s had a lot of interest in its early campaign. Backers actually bid a minimum of $ 5 for access, so it’s a discount from the original in fact, according to the company.

Often, makers of keyboard software on Android charge money for their products. SwiftKey is paid, and also charges $ 3.99, so it isn’t without precedent, and it’s harder to put the genie back in the bottle in terms of offering something free and then charging for it later than doing things the other way around.

Minuum has had a high user retention rate so far, with around 8,000 users active over the past two months of the initial pool of 9,500 who signed up for early access via the Indiegogo campaign. The iOS version is planned for the end of the year as a demonstration app aimed at developers (who need to build Minuum into their own apps, since Apple doesn’t allow a user to change the default software keyboard), Whirlscape’s Maria Lioutaia tells me. For now, users with Android smartphones or tablets can join in the public beta, however.

There have been a lot of updates since the first launch, but the beta label remain until Whirlscape can localize to a number of different languages, which is what the startup is working on next.

TechCrunch

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