Free web-based chat tool

I found this great chat tool the other day - Tinychat. I have been searching for one for a while now and even started developing one myself. However this seems to meet all my expectations and more since it's very functional and free.

You start by creating an account. In the settings you specify things like the name of the chat room, description, allowed users (guest, Facebook, Twitter). Further on you can design it with some colors and background image and have 1-5 moderators connected to the chat room. The chat room can also be linked to MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. A chatroom can be open or locked with a password and the same goes for the right to broadcast.



Users can also broadcast using camera and microphone. This can be controlled by the moderator. There is also functionality for showing the desktop, sharing a whiteboard, play a YouTube video and edit a group document.

You can at any time click a user of the chatroom to see more info. If a user is logged in with Facebook or Twitter there is actually something to see here. Otherwise you are able to send private messages or ignore a user. As an administrator you can also ban the user or close the camera.



In a former post I mentioned the Wibiya web toolbar. It uses TinyChat as the chat tool and as default with temporary chat rooms. If you go through the process of registering and setting up the chatroom you can use this in the Wibiya toolbar as well. This allows you to moderate the chat room which is otherwise not currently possible.