App teaches how to make bruschetta, paper airplanes and everything else

What does solving a Rubick's Cube, making beef jerky and curling your hair with a straightening iron all have in common?

They're just three out of many hundreds of guides available bundled in the new (and awesome) Snapguide app for iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

Consider it a collection of "how-to" guides — but not from professionals. Instead, Snapguide is a community-driven app that encourages everyday folks to share something they know how to do.

For example, you can learn to bake a cake in a coffee mug, open a beer bottle without an opener, tie a necktie or perform a magic trick to wow friends at a party. Find out how to roast coffee beans, take a screenshot on your iPhone or make your bed like they do at hotels.

Each guide offers a step-to-step lesson that contains photos and/or videos, along with written descriptions at the bottom of the screen. It's not quite YouTube — most guides have 15 to 20 still photos and only one or two videos (if any) — but this method is still powerful thanks to the text descriptions that accompany each step.

Swipe up on the screen at any time to see a list of items you need for the task at hand, such as cooking ingredients or a list of parts to make a birdhouse, origami creation or Angry Birds out of coloured balloons.

If you want to share a guide, you can post it to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or send to someone privately via email.

Sign up for a free account and you can also leave comments, privately message other users, "follow them" (to be alerted when there's a new lesson) or start your very own Snapguide.

In fact, while Snapguide can also be viewed on a computer (snapguide.com), to create a guide you'll need to install the free iOS app. The app will walk you through taking pictures and videos on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, and then adding captions to describe each step. If you prefer to talk instead of type, Snapguide also supports voice dictation powered by Nuance (the same technology used by Apple's Siri) to accurately transcribe your voice instructions into text. Your content is owned by you and not Snapguide.

Snapguide already has a few thousand guides, but expect that number to balloon significantly as word catches on. And that will no doubt happen sooner than later.