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Here's the newest WEB 2.0 toy spreading fast through the blogosphere: Ether.com. It offers an easy way to phone-connect experts in any domain to people requesting advices. Ether.com handles a_party billing in advance, hides both phone numbers so they stay in control, makes the IVR calls to connect the parties at given times and more. Overall an interesting idea to watch over; if they survive the obvious spam and fraud attacks they will encounter. They seem to have a massive background architecture behind the simplicity of their idea; which is great news. So besides the hype-inflated huge fonts and the Apple-freaks ruby on rails bubble-type of presentation they seems to really carry a business model around.

I wonder how long will it take for Google to realize that Ether.com is a bridge between Google Answers and Google's click to talk. Probably with their recent expansions they won't realize it soon; and even when they do, they might stay silent out of the flashlights and learn.

Probably Ether's roadmap involves ranking for experts in order to cut out fraud; business intelligence tools for quality analysis; geo-location for a_parties. I think they don't match anywhere in Russel Beatie's WTF 2.0 list; but who knows, he's an expert in criticism. Here's also TechCrunch's review.

I also hope their production system will be more reliable; since there seems to be a way to bypass their limited invite-only beta.