Google Has A New Service That Will Teach You How To Do Stuff By Live Video Chatting With An Expert

Need some personalized help to optimize your workout or help you learn ukulele?

Google officially launched its new real-time instructional video chat service, Helpouts, Tuesday morning to amp up the experience of how-to YouTube videos.

Helpouts connects users via live video chat with experts who can offer tutorials, instructions, and advice on a wide variety of topics.

Vendors who get pre-screened by Google can charge either per minute or per session for their advice. They can also elect to offer their services for free (tasty Caribbean cuisine, anyone?). Google takes 20% off of each transaction, and, unsurprisingly, all payments must be made through Google Wallet, Google's online payments service that ties to your regular credit card.

To participate, you have to use a Google+ profile to hold you accountable to your real identity, and Google encourages anyone who gets a tutorial to leave a review so that bad vendors get policed out by the crowd. Because some tutorials deal with either mental or physical health, Helpouts is HIPAA-certified, which means that there are regulations in place to insure the online privacy of patient information and medical records.

So far, the spread of options is diverse and it's likely to keep on growing as the service heats up. We've peeped videos on topics ranging from modeling advice, Flash programming, and the martial arts, to forced-air gas furnace repair and binge-eating prevention.

Interested? You can either schedule a Helpouts session in advance or find an available tutorial instantly.

Check out this Google's promo vid here: