TinyChat.tv's interface will feel very familiar if you used the regular TinyChat before.

Room owners can customize the look and feel of their rooms and decide if they want to force users to sign in with their Twitter or Facebook accounts. One feature we really liked on TinyChat was that users could type a random URL (tinychat.com/12345) and the service would automatically create a room with this URL. This feature hasn't been enabled on TinyChat.tv yet, but TinyChat's co-founder Dan Blake tells us that it will come back soon.

For $9.95 per month, users can also buy a pro membership that allows them to set passwords for rooms and stream higher quality video.

For Developers: Free Streaming with TinyChat API

For developers, TinyChat now offers a comprehensive free application programming interface (API) that makes it easy for developers to create their own Ustream clones. Indeed, TinyChat.tv itself was built on top of this API. Earlier today, Dan Blake told us that TinyChat will not charge developers for bandwidth. Stickam currently charges $0.45 per gigabyte for its streamAPI white label service.

Overall, this is a nice upgrade to the regular TinyChat experience. The old TinyChat, where users don't need to sign up will continue to operate. The big development is the API, however, and we are looking forward to seeing what developers will do with it.

Due to an unfortunate technical glitch, users ended up hearing the audio from the film's trailer over the interview audio. Overall, the audio was a mess, and UStream/MySpaceID integration for commenting was a popup-ridden, timeout-plagued, fail-inducing nightmare. Nevertheless, as a first-time integration of real-time, interactive video on one of the world's largest social networks, we suppose results could have been worse.

Neither the "studio" nor the audio, which was fraught with ear-torturing static, were what one would expect at any other kind of press junket. And the MySpaceID integration, which would allow users to comment on the video chat, was far from perfect. Every text comment required a two-click confirmation, but there didn't seem to be any options to have that content duplicated on a user's profile as a status update or bulletin, which might have helped with attracting more users to the chat. Moreover, a few comments we tried to send timed out or simply didn't post.

MySpace is painfully late to the game in integrating technologies such as Twitter, UStream, and other services that could grant the aging behemoth a second wind in terms of reclaiming former users, especially in the U.S.

In general, the ability to conduct real-time, live video interviews might be a great promotional vehicle for entertainment properties, but this effort seemed far too half-hearted to be a successful implementation of the available technology. MySpace, UStream, and the properties they choose to have participate in these kinds of promotions will have to do a much better job of ensuring a glitch-free experience for a larger group of users if these partnerships are to have any meaning in the company's future.

2. 12cast: After much anticipation, 12seconds.tv released their video application for the iPhone 3GS. The app allows users to create a short 12 second video clip and from here they can share the video's short URL with their friends through Twitter.

3. Twitvid and Posterous: Both Twitvid and Posterous allow users to create videos on their mobile phones and email them to be uploaded to the site. With Twitvid, friends receive a DM message with a link to the newest video. ReadWriteWeb recently covered Twitvid in a round up of Twitter video apps. Meanwhile, with Posterous, your files are instantly converted and embedded as a flash player on your site.

4.Livecast Bambuser and Flixwagon: Livecast, Bambuser and Flixwagon are all similar services that allow users to stream videos live to their channels, blogs and Facebook accounts. Depending on your community preference you can upload vlogs, short films and vignettes.

5. Qik: Qik allows users to stream live videos to their channels, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Justin.tv accounts. One nice feature of the Qik video for Android is that users can trim their clips via their phones before uploading them. ReadWriteWeb named Qik one of the top 100 products of 2008.

6.Kyte: While it doesn't support live streaming, Kyte's iPhone 3GS app allows users to record video and upload it to their channels in an extremely easy manner. The service also offers branded mobile sites for big name celebrities.

We know we're only skimming the surface. If your favorite app isn't listed above, let us know about it in the comments.

The NASA Endeavour was set to launch to the International Space Station today at 7:13PM EDT from Cape Canaveral, Florida after a 24 hour lightning-induced delay. The mission was delayed several times and while Commander Mark Polansky's Twitter account and NASA's official account announced that the launch was likely to happen, online viewers watched via NASA TV as the mission was scrubbed with only minutes to spare. The launch has been rescheduled for 6:51PM EDT tomorrow.

The live broadcast as well as additional resources are available on NASA's Multimedia Page. Below are some additional space-related resources you might want to check out before tomorrow's scheduled launch:

NASA Collaborate:Those interested in joining NASA's online groups can connect via Facebook, Ustream, YouTube, Twitter and MySpace. Rather than waiting for press releases, fans can get their updates straight from astronauts, scientists and NASA executives.

Google Sky and Hubble's KML plug-in files: Google Sky allows users to view high resolution images of the night-sky. Hubble image plug-ins make for an extremely crisp intergalactic travel experience. You can search for planets, galaxies, nebulae and stars and zoom into them with great precision.

NASA Satellite Tracking & Heavens Above NASA Satellite Tracking offers users a number of options to track more than 2,500 satellites, the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Meanwhile, Heavens Above offers satellite predictions, sky charts and info on a number of comets.

Among some of Watershed's most interesting features are its granular security settings (down to limiting access to certain IP addresses), detailed analytics, and real-time chat and polls.

Competition

Other white-label video streaming services like Level 3 (pdf) or Move Networks offer similar solutions, though they generally only target larger enterprises and media companies. While Watershed's pricing model seems reasonable, the price itself feels rather high, though Ustream's CEO argues that it is comparable to services from other live streaming providers.

Other streaming services like Mogulus Pro tend to charge a monthly fee for their 'pro' services. Mogulus, however, also charges for bandwidth and Ustream argues that its pay-as-you-go service provides more flexibility.

It's those damn puppies.

Reports were flooding in this week over Twitter, about workplace after workplace where people couldn't get a thing done because they were entranced by the antics of those little furballs. Productivity must have gone through the floor since that Ustream channel went live.

Oh, look – they're sleeping! It's so cute!

More Noise to Signal

When YouTube Live launches later this year, this medium is only going to get bigger.

The company says that these 10 million uniques come from the whole UStream network, which presumably includes embedded players. Third party traffic analysts Quantcast says that UStream participates in its traffic monitoring program (using embed codes) and reports that the UStream global network gets just under 8 million uniques as far as it's concerned. UStream says Quantcast is new to them and will take some time to catch up in its reporting. That may be a viable explanation, but the numbers are close enough. UStream also reports that their number equals 10 million people actually playing a live video stream - not people who have loaded pages that happen to have an unplayed UStream player embedded in them. It also doesn't include views of recorded videos. That's impressive.

Competitor Mogulus also uses Quantcast, and Quantcast says they have a global network that sees 4.5 million uniques.

Those are serious numbers. We've argued for some time that live video was going to be big, but the pace of growth is a little bit surprising. Note also that UStream was established just over a year ago, in March of 2007. When we reported this week that social news site Mixx hasn't been able to surpass 1 million unique visitors per month in their first year despite links from every story on CNN.com, USAToday, Weather.com and a list of other major media sites - we said there was an integration or audience targeting problem. UStream's 10 million and Mogulus's 4.5 million monthly uniques are what new media technologies look like when they really start to catch on.