Sites such as LanguagePods and edufire are great, and are definitely helping to change the face of online language education. Even while learning languages in college, my Tibetan class relied heavily on online resources and translation tools - making learning obscure languages possible.

Another site that is really helpful for learning language - which I use mostly for finding language partners who can give me real expertise (since they're native speakers) is italki.com. It seems to go beyond creating a marketplace for teachers, rather, it emphasises the fact that learning a language should be free of charge to anyone with an internet connection. It thus is driving the cost of language learning down - hopefully eventually making it free, across the board. italki seems to be doing a good job, as it lets people participate in the learning process and creates a community by letting people post questions and answers, contribute learning resources, and start and edit wiki pages for any language.

Hopefully this is just the beginning of online learning sites, and I look forward to seeing how they develop and continue to raise the bar (and hopefully lower the price)..