Here's a good opportunity, guys. I've been bragging to the guys over at chineseteachers.com about how great you all are at giving feedback, and they're offering beta invites through this forum. They've just started their beta and you'll be among the first users, but I think the site is already very useful because...

They're paying hundreds of Chinese teachers for one-on-one lessons for you to test it out. So they can't do a fully open beta, but the first 25 people to register via this link will get $20 of credit with which to test the site and also find some good teachers:

http://www.chineseteachers.com/entrance?id=c364850220644e30012066f3840c0008

Depending on the teacher's experience, that's up to an hour of lessons, so check it out. They charge by the second, too, which I think is a great idea, and with the number of teachers they've signed up, lessons can fit your preference and your schedule. The site works by matching you up with teachers and then providing a Skype-like audio widget embedded in the site, so they take care of all the infrastructure.

Anyway, if you do sign up, please do give feedback--they respond quickly and need your help. It's a small beta, so don't assume anything has already been pointed out.

Got one, thanks Nick. Looks cool. I'll report back when I do it.

Thanks for that ,definitely will check it out

This sounds like a service that would be really useful. In general I'm a pretty independent learner - I already get lots of practice speaking Chinese and a regular meeting with a tutor can be a burden. Most of the time I just need some exercises corrected or advice on how to best express a certain concept in Chinese. I signed up about 10 minutes after you posted the link, and will give it a whirl this weekend.

There are spots left on this trial and they're still looking for more feedback, so if you haven't checked it out yet, give it a try.

Those who have had a chance to get a lesson: what did you think?

I haven't yet taken a lesson though I intend to do so soon.

I think the idea is quite interesting. Wordlwide community of people who can teach you something and I can talk to them if they are online and available. The whole site is also set up very professionally.
What did strike me was the price...starting from 20$ going up to 40?60?$. That seems quite steep. Of course, one can argue that if you go to China you have to pay a lot more because you have to leave your job and need to live there instead and if you frequent advanced Chinese lessons in your own country they tend to cost more than this service...nevertheless, for anyone who just wants to play around a bit with the language or wants to have a hobby, that quickly adds up to a lot (because only having 30 minutes per week won't get you very far). I will probably suggest something along the budget version where some people can take a lesson together, although I'm not quite sure which format exactly that would have...
But still...very interesting idea and I will definitely be using up my credit this week (including the one dollar for the bug I spotted:)

Just realised while rereading my post that I wasn't very clear...those 20$/40$/60$ per hour.

I've signed up but won't be able to take the lesson until next week as I'm away travelling

First, a big thank you to our friends at Skritter for being so supportive (and also bringing such a useful service to learn & remember Chinese characters)

We hope you all enjoy our platform and can help us improve it over this beta phase. We have already received very good suggestions from some of you , and already gave a few $1 bonus for bugs reported!

I just wanted to quickly comment on the pricing. It is actually $20, $30 & $40 depending on experience. And the reason it cannot be cheaper is that we want to attract the best Chinese teachers possible (and they all go through strict assessments on the platform itself), and this all around the world.

Also the price "per hour" is not really meaningful, if just for comparison, because you decide how long you want the lesson, every single time. So, if you want to 'snack' 10 minutes every day (which I read is a much better way to improve ones' language when compared to 2 hours a day), you can do it between about $2.6 to $5.3 per day, or probably $3.5 on average when mixing different level of teachers.

For example, if you call our practitioner for 5 minutes and 20 seconds to be sure on how to pronounce a certain sentence, you will only pay $1.10 because it will count as 3 minutes and 20 seconds, as the first 2 minutes are always free.

Thank you again for your interest and great feedback... and spreading the word to your friends if you like our service,

The ChineseTeachers.com team

i just signed up and apparently still within the limit of 25 and that after 6 days. so if any of you still want to try, there seem to be more open spots.

To the 25 Skritter users that helped us so much,

I wanted to post a big THANK YOU for all your very valuable and insightful feedback over the last 3 months - this has been so valuable and we are confident it has improved our service big time!

I also want to give special BIG thanks to Nick for his support and very useful feedback, Simon for his very detailed feedback over 20+ emails and JF for his ongoing encouragement and excitement!

Oh, and we have reduced our pricing! You can have live Chinese lessons with our 150+ Chinese teachers from $12 an hour

As you only pay in proportion of the length of your lesson and never pay the first two minutes, so a 15 minutes lesson with our practitioners would be (15 - 2) x 12 / 60 = $2.6. So, feel free to use it, especially those that still have some of the free credits!

Finally, we now have students from 67 nationalities!!! (http://www.chineseteachers.com/students-learning-chinese.jsp). As we can't wait to reach 100, but it is getting tougher now, we have a special offer for Skritter users: if you introduce us to a friend whose nationality is not in the list, we will give you (and her/him) extra credits! Just ask your friend to mention your name and we will take care of the credits :)

The ChineseTeachers.com team

PS: please keep the feedback flowing - we know we still have a lot to improve!