Google, the online search behemoth has launched a website for people who need help on just about anything from photography to cooking; other categories include Home & Garden, Computers & Electronics, Health & Counseling, Nutrition & Fitness, Fashion & Beauty, Art & Music, Cooking and Education. It utilises much of Google’s existing services like Wallet and Hangouts to create an online marketplace where people can sell their service. Previously unveiled in August as a private service, Helpouts is now open to anyone and they can tap into more than 1,000 vetted providers.

Helpouts already has an Android app and is available on the Web. The courses are created by tutors who may charge for their services out of which Google takes a 20% cut As many as 1,000 experts are on Helpouts, with individuals, small and medium-sized businesses being a part of the service.

The minimum age for people using the service is 13 while 18 is the minimum age to become an expert. Google has indicated some future plans of developing an API for the service to expand its reach.

Here is the introductory video to Helpouts.

> Source: TheNextWeb

Semi finalists have emerged in the Google Apps Developer Challenge for 2012. Developers in six regions across the world are competing for prizes that include Chromebooks and up to $20,000. Google is specially highlighting innovations of students and female developers.

Apps were initially submitted within three categories

• Enterprise / Small Business Solutions
• Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun
• Not-for-Profit: Education / Water / Food & Hunger / Health

Nigeria is represented by three Apps at the semi finals including DoctorPlus – a non-profit online medical service aimed at leveraging on the Google Apps platform to provide the minimal infrastructure needed. FistDrive which we covered earlier, is also on the semi finals list.

At the finals, a winner will be chosen from each category. Here’s the full list of all the semi finalists from around the world

India

Education / Not for Profit / Water / Food & Hunger / Health

• BadgeIt, India
  BadgeIt is a HTML5 web application that helps event or conference organizers generate badges for their attendees
• Standard Assessment, India
  Standard Assessment is a unique tool that pulls in data from multiple data sources and allows for educators to analyze tends in the data at a variety of levels
• Localizer, India
  Localizer helps inter-state Indian migrants to settle in a new place

Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun

• Doc MineSweeper, India
  Implementation of the Minesweeper game for Google Spreadsheets
• CloudPosta, India
  CloudPosta acts as a discussion and information site by letting the users share their knowledge easily
• FaceShow, India
  Face-Show is an application which is used to tell the moods of the persons from your Gmail emails
• GA!ert, India
  GA!ert – an instant Gmail reminder

Latin America

Enterprise / Small Business Solutions

• Google Drive Graphic Explorer, Mexico
  Google Drive Graphic Explorer is a simple interface that lets you manage all your files and shared files in a single view
• SMG, Brazil
  Smart Mail-merge for Google is a Google Apps Script web-app that allows any Google user to send bulk emails performing mail-merge with data stored on various Google products, namely: Google Spreadsheets, Google Fusion Tables and Google Contacts
• Cloud Pivot, Colombia
  “Cloud Pivot” is an application OLAP business intelligence tool

Education / Not for Profit / Water / Food & Hunger / Health

• I’m Volunteer Network, Dominican Republic
  It is an application for reporting environmental problems and matching them to volunteers
• MyDataPro, Chile
  MyDataPro is a convenient fast paced searching tool of global indicators and concerning statistical data from a broad range of fields

Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun

• GTD Easy Task, Brazil
  This is a third party GTD – Getting Things Done tool for Google apps
• IC3D World Map Editor, Brazil
  A tool to create 3D maps for games, saving JSON files that can be used in game development

Middle East and North Africa

Education / Not for Profit / Water / Food & Hunger / Health

• LocalEDU, Morocco
  LocalEDU is a web application which aims to make it easier and more fun for students, professors, school staff and ministry of education staff to collaborate to produce a better learning environment
• Signal Flow Graph Solver, Egypt
  Online tool for solving signal flow graphs
• We-Cloud, Algeria
  We-Cloud is a project management platform based in the cloud that facilitates coordination between the different members of the project team

Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun

• Android Cloud Note, Egypt
  Android Application that capture images then upload it to Drive with ocr enabled so it can work as a scanner that convert images , books & papers into an editable text
• Drivanizer, Egypt
  It’s a tool that let you perform some quick tasks on your Google Drive files

South East Asia

Enterprise / Small Business Solutions

• CollabSpot Notetaker, Philippines
  The CollabSpot Notetaker allows you to collaboratively create tasks and document links during a Google+ Hangouts session
• Riverpark Leaf, Thailand
  Riverpark Leaf is web-based leave request application

Education / Not for Profit / Water / Food & Hunger / Health

• myThesis, Indonesia
  App that helps students track their process when writing their thesis
• FAILRAIL.sg, Singapore
  FAILRAIL.sg is a data visualization of train service disruptions in Singapore

Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun

• Events KIT, Philippines
  Events KIT is an app to handle events, meetings or usual meet-ups.
• tsksticker, Philippines
  Create your art/comic strips/animations using drag and drop stickers
• CleverNote, Philippines
  Note taking app for Google Drive

Sub-Saharan Africa

Enterprise / Small Business Solutions

• DocTracker, Uganda
  DocTracker manages incoming and outgoing office document records.
• NomiaPro, Ghana
  NomiaPro is a web application that will help businesses organize all their conferences delegates
• Form+, Nigeria
  This application brings the power of Google Drive to forms.

Education / Not for Profit / Water / Food & Hunger / Health

• Daktari, Uganda
  Daktari is a an application that helps one, specifically patients communicate easily with doctors
• Open Docs Hub, Côte d’Ivoire
  The Open Docs Hub is a document sharing open source platform that leverages the power of Google Drive
• Daro, Kenya
  Daro, swahili slang for ‘class’, is a simple app for managing a class.
• DoctorPlus, Nigeria
  DoctorPlus is a non-profit online medical service aimed at leveraging the on the Google Apps platform to provide the minimal infrastructure needed
• Prep-hub, South Africa
  Prep-hub is a web application that hosts past examination and test papers for students and encourages collaboration between them as they prepare for examinations and/or tests
• Open Drive, Togo
  Open Drive is a collective encyclopedia project based on Google Drive public files and on the crowd sharing, crowd sourcing and crowd-solving principles
• Realinx, South Africa
  Realinx is an easy way to organise information according their relationships.
• QuizerApp, Kenya
  An app intended to make classroom revision easier and fun, both for the lecturers (tutors) and the students.
• Identichip, South Africa
  Service that allows users to search for information about a tag / microchip

Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun

• Tunebanda, Kenya
  Tunebanda is a easy-to-use music player application for Google Drive
• I-Organize, Cameroon
  I-Organize is a tool that could be used to semantically reorganize the files of your drive by categories.
• Fist Drive, Zambia
  Fist Drive is a mobile, cloud file sharing application for Google Drive
• Integrated Project Manager, Kenya
  A task manager implemented as a chrome extension and integrates with Google Tasks and Google Calendar
• Dextop, Uganda
  Dextop is a desktop-like portal to your cloud-based applications. A lightweight virtual desktop
• Tokelezea, Kenya
  Tokelezea is a social event check in and management application
• BabiEvents, Cote D’ivoire
  BabiEvents is a web app that allows to know the events that take place in Cote D’Ivoire – where and when
• Remindme, Uganda
  Location based reminder
• Ludo Game, Nigeria
  Ludo Game is an online multiplayer ludo board game

United States, Europe and the Rest of the World

Enterprise / Small Business Solutions

• Otomofis Mobile Dynamic Business Management, Turkey
  Otomofis is a financial and inventory management tool for small and medium enterprises
• Log Drive, United Kingdom
  Log Drive lets developers log strings to a Google Drive spreadsheet and tries to make the process as simple and fast as possible
• ProMailr, France
  ProMailr is an innovative professional layer on top of Google Apps
• FiT Issue Tracker, Germany
  FiT is bug/feature request submission, reporting, and tracking system based on Google Apps Script, Google Spreadsheets, Google Sites, and the Google Visualization API
• Ultradox, Germany
  Ultradox allows you to generate nice documents from powerful templates
• Vidroid Teamwork, Ukraine
  Vidroid Teamwork(VT) is a project management and collaboration tool developed using Google Services
• GDynamic Document, France
  GDynamic Document allows users to create dynamic document from a spreadsheet datasource
• Begroting Opleidingen, Netherlands
  Railway maintenance App
• MarkIt Web Publisher, United States
  MarkIt Web Publisher is an exciting application for publishing Markdown content, resident within Google Drive, to the web
• Simple Invoicing, United States
  Simple Invoicing collects the required information; invoices are automatically generated and stored in your Google Drive

Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun

• MIDI 2 Mp3, Sweden
  MIDI 2 Mp3 is a conversion tool for the filetypes MID/MIDI which converts these files to Mp3
• Deedle, Ukraine
  Deedle – is a unique social project which encourage people to share things they have done
• Gantt Chart Generator, United States
  Generates Gantt Chart from Google Spreadsheet
• Neutron Drive, United States
  Neutron Drive is a code editor for Google Drive
• HTML5 Photo Viewer, United States
  This application is a HTML5 Photo Viewer with support for multi-touch gestures

Three winners emerged from the Co-Creation Hub Tech-in-Ed hackathon in February this year.

aYoruba is an Android app from the stables of Asa, it is targeted at children who wish to learn Yoruba. The app is split into topics such as Body Parts, Greetings  and Animals and is available for free on Google Play.

For all our obodo oyinbo friends and ajebutters, here’s an app to help you out. The head of the team, Adebayo Adegbemo says the app is targeted at kids age 5-12 and people who want to learn Yoruba. He also says there’ll be more titles built into aYoruba so we’re hoping there’s a revenue stream from upgrades.

Efiko, a quiz app also from CC-Hub’s Tech-in-Ed hackathon, had received funding from the Tony Elumelu Foundation and the Nigerian Internet Group earlier.

Congratulations to Adebayo Adegbemo and the rest of the team at Asa. I was at the hackathon and I know there’s a long road from idea to application.

Here are a few screenshots of the aYoruba for Android. It’ll be available on other platforms soon.

Africa’s first online only university, the Beni American University is now publicly available to applicants after weeks of running in BETA. Courses are available in undergraduate for secondary school graduates and graduate categories for degree holders. Only two undergraduate courses are currently available – Associate Degree in Business Management and Associate Degree in Management Information Systems.

Undergraduate courses cost $2000 and are open to installment payments of $1000. Beni American University is also open to part-time students. Graduate courses on the other hand, cost $3000. 25 percent scholarships are available for students who have spent the equivalent of a year at the university and have a minimum GPA of 3.5.

Beni American University has partnership with Encipher, usePULSE and NEAI. Pulse will supply Beni American University students with low-cost Android tablets from the fall of 2012. Internship opportunities are available via Encipher.

Technology, more especially the internet is about to change Education like it has changed almost every industry it has come in contact with. The question is are people willing to pay for content you can get free on MIT’s Open Courseware and other platforms?

Students Circle Network, founded by Gossy Ukanwoke, is an academic social network. Ukanwoke’s next startup is the Beni American Univeristy , an online university for African students.

Beni American University hopes to bring quality education to Africans who can’t afford fees of foreign universities. Students who enroll in Beni American University will receive a PC and internet access as perks.

Focus subjects for the university will include technology, web 2.0 and entrepreneurship. I like the entrepreneurship part the most. Ukanwoke also has plans to launch in Central America and Asia.

How will this compete with free services like Udacity and Open Courseware? We’ll have to wait to see that.

Source: Black Web 2.0

Last month, Apple launched iBooks 2. The upgrade to iBooks introduced iTextbooks – a platform that allows publishers embed rich and interactive media into digital books. This infographic takes a look at the advantages and disadvantages of the iPad and Textbooks, as well as the cost of purchasing and maintaining both options. What do you think?

Source: Daily Infographic

Since its inception in 2005, Google’s Summer of Code has brought together over 5,500 students and over 3,000 mentors across 100 countries – for the love of code. Throughout the summer, accepted students will be paired with a project mentor or mentors participating in the project. This helps students get exposed to real-world software development scenarios. It also opens up opportunities for employments in areas related to their academics. Due to the large number of students and mentors, participating projects are able to identify and bring in new developers.

For eligibility, applicants must be 18 years of age or older on or before the 23rd of April 2012. On February 24, Google Africa will host a hangout on Google+, where Googlers [Google staff] will share more information on Google Summer of Code and its opportunities. Sign up for the hangout here and checkout the Google Summer of Code website.

Co-Creation Hub’s ‘Tech-In’ hackathons are a series of hackathons aimed at fixing problems we face in our society with the use of technology. It is an event focusing on the application of technology to improve learning among primary and secondary school students in Nigeria.

It’s discussions began in December and will be rounded with a hackathon from the 17th -19th of February. Co-creation Hub needs your ideas as well as your skills. Software developers, web designers, user interface designers, teachers, business managers and marketing gurus are welcome. If you’ve already got an idea, you can submit it via the tech-in website or register to participate in the 2-day hackathon.

The deadline for registration and submission is 7th of February so you have to hurry if you’re just seeing this. Co-creation Hub has put up a bunch of resources to get your mind kicking. The hub is searching for 6 novel ideas that’ll be eventually worked on. The best of these ideas wins a prize money of $3000.

Co-creation Hub is Nigeria’s first open living lab and pre-incubation space designed multipurpose space where the catalyzation of creative social tech ventures take place with members ranging from developers to government, technology companies and hackers. The aim is to solve Nigeria’s many problems by creating new solutions.

A research note from Research analyst Trip Chowdry claims that users have downloaded over 350,000 iBooks Textbooks from the iBookstore within the first 3 days of launch. iOS users also downloaded iBooks Author over 90,000 times. iBooks Textbooks come as a new feature in last week’s release of Apple’s iBooks 2.

Let’s take a look at the number of books at the iBookstore. 8. Only 8 books are currently avalable for purchase from iBookstore. What is unclear to us is how many of those downloads were purchases. Out of 8 books, 7 of them carry a maximum price tag of $14.99. The eighth book is E.O Wilson’s “Life On Earth”. Apple put up only 2 chapters of the book for free.

Looks like iBookstore is off to a great start.

Source: MacRumors via AllThingsD

The South Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has announced that it will invest over $2billion by 2015 towards the development of digital textbooks. At the early stage of the transition both paperback and digital textbooks will be used. The digital textbooks will contain content from paper textbooks as well as interactive multimedia and FAQs to help students understand the system better. The government also plans to build a cloud computing system so users will access a database of all digital textbooks from their Tablets.

The Ministry is also pushing a cause for online classes for students who miss classes so they can catch up. This system will require a massive server where all the data can be stored as well as WiFi in schools. A ministry official said “It will be up to schools to decide which digital textbooks to choose for students in what year in what subject,”. “We don’t expect the shift to digital textbooks to be difficult as students today are very accustomed to the digital environment.” The ministry also plans to provide free tablet PCs for students from low-income families.

What do you think about this transition from paper to digital? Is it going to affect assimilation in anyway? Noting that Paper is continually downplayed as we move towards a more digital way of life.

Source: Engadget via The Chosunlibo