Even though we live in an age of instant Qik streams, video chats on Skype, and micro-blogging on Twitter, sometimes all you need is a simple chatroom for real-time text chats. TinyChat solves this problem by creating simple, disposable chatrooms. Tinychats works exactly as advertised. It's a disposable, no-frills chatroom, with a deliberately limited feature set. There are no accounts to sign up for and whenever you open up a new room, TinyChat will simply create a new URL for you. ]]>
While you don't have to create an account on TinyChat, you can (and will!) alert your Twitter followers when you open a new chatroom and sign in with your Twitter login. It is important to note that you can't turn this message off - if you sign in with your Twitter account, that message will go out to all of your followers!
Besides the basic chat function, TinyChat also features the ability to add a badge with your chatroom status to your blog or social networking profile. You can also save a copy of your chat log by saving it as a text file, or by forwarding it to your email account.
Hidden Features: Choose Your Own URL and Private Chat
If you don't want to use TinyChat's cryptic names for your chatroom, you can also choose your own by just appending it to the TinyChat URL. If you want to send a private message, just click on the person's name and your message will be invisible to the rest of the room.
The chatroom concept does feel a bit retro, and it would be nice if you could receive some kind of audio or visual notification whenever a new message was posted to your room, but overall, the service just does what it say it does, and it does it well.
iPhone and Flash Coming Soon
Dan Blake, TinyChat's developer, tell us that they are also currently working on a simple iPhone app and a flash widget. If you like TinyChat, you should also check out TinyPaste (short URLs for long quotes) and iOJ (file uploading and sharing app) from the same developers.