Tinychat is an instant messaging application with support for video calls. I found Tinychat some time ago when it was a service that allowed you to create disposable chats, where you could simply invite a friend by sending the URL and start chatting. Since then, the application evolved quite a bit. The disposable chat service is still available, but it has lost popularity. People now mostly use the service to chat with strangers. This is made easy by the featured chat rooms, which anyone can enter. There are quite a few available, and you can see how many people are connected and chatting before you enter. Each chat room has a set of rules, and breaking them can get you banned.
Tinychat is built using Adobe Air, which means it's available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. In my testing, the performance of the application was quite good. I didn't feel any differences between using the Air app or the web interface.
There are many nice features to talk about. For example, up to twelve people can video chat per room. I have been in rooms with 6 or 7 people and all the cameras looked smooth to me. There were no slow-downs and the quality was good enough. You can import friends from your IM services, social networks and e-mails. The friends that you find in random chatrooms can also be added to a buddy list for easier access in the future. Files can be shared with other users, and a nice feature is the ability to watch YouTube videos with other users. more
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