Replying to comments on status updates, photos, videos or Wall posts has now been made easier: users can now reply directly via email.

Previously, users were only notified by mail about new comments on their content or on other people’s contents they have commented on. Replying to comments meant logging in to Facebook and posting the comment. This was not always possible due to companies banning the site from work offices or users being on the go, receiving notifications on their mobile phone.

Reply to a comment by email

Email-reply successfully posted on Facebook.

As from yesterday, Facebook users can simply click “Reply” on their notification mail and type the comment they want to send back without having to log in to Facebook.

This new feature would predictably make the site even more active.

To know more about it, head over to the announcement post on Facebook’s blog.

Gravity would take everything down and that’s just what happens with Google Gravity; it shambles down all elements of Google’s homepage as you can see below.

Google Gravity

Google Gravity is a project by Hi-Res!, a London-based company consisting of a team of developers. It is perhaps a tribute to Isaac Newton, the guy behind the discovery of gravity, who was born on the 4th of January 1643 and to whom Google recently dedicated a doodle.

Google's Isaac Newton Doodle

Google Gravity is fun to use as you can see all your search results floating right in front of you. A slight downside of it is that it works with Google Chrome only, nothing unusual though, since it’s one of Chrome Experiments projects.

Floating search results on Google Gravity

Breaking Borders Award is a Google endeavour in collaboration with Global Voices, an NGO and Thomson Reuters.

The purpose of the awards would be to honour “outstanding web projects by individuals or groups who have shown courage, energy and resourcefulness in using the Internet to promote freedom of expression, making us aware of diverse political viewpoints and standing up to those who censor information.”

More information and candidates for the award can be nominated on Breaking Borders’ official page.The closing date for submissions is the 15th of February 2010.

If you thought Facebook.com was full of superficial beings then you should try BeautifulPeople.com.

BeautifulPeople.com is a global dating site which boasts having around 550, 000 members worldwide and is supposed to be “an exclusively beautiful community, founded for the purpose of creating personal and professional relationships.”

Aspiring members of BeautifulPeople.com are expected to submit a photo of themselves while signing up. During the 48 hours following the creation of the account, the potential member’s photo will be rated by existing members of the opposite sex on BeautifulPeople.com. A new member is admitted only if the other members give a positive rating on his or her photo.

Recently, there has been some buzz in the media around this site when it kicked off 5000 members mostly from the U.S, UK and Canada for the simple reason that those members have gained weight during the festive period. New pictures that those members have uploaded post-holidays showed them with additional pounds.

BeautifulPeople representatives have justified the kicking off of those members as being a necessity in order to preserve the essence of the site and to keep the interest of existing members seeking to meet beautiful people on the site.

This action has given rise to disagreements with social groups such as the Fat Acceptance Movement and FatRights.org which try to sensitise people about going beyond looks when judging people.

One thing’s for sure, however, is that the BeautifulPeople.com has gained a lot of attention recently due to this notorious feat. It might be wondered whether that was purposefully intended to serve as a publicity stunt.

Do you know what Groovle.com and Froogles.com have in common? Apart from the fact that the domain names slightly resemble that of the web giant Google.com, they are also the only 2 companies out of 65 who have managed to keep their domain names after Google launched a complaint against those domain names.

Groovle.com

207 Media, a small Canadian enterprise, the owner of Groovle.com, a search engine, has managed to convince the three judges of the National Arbitration Forum, an agency approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to solve domain name disputes, that Groovle is related more to the word “groove” than to Google.

Although being powered by Google, Groovle allows users to personalise their search homepages with images of their own and to use that homepage to carry out searches using Google.

As for Froogles, it was in 2004 that its owner, Richard Wolfe won the case against Google by persuading the arbitrators that his e-commerce site could not be confused with Google.

Froogles.com

One thing’s for sure, better choose a domain name farthest away from Google.com than go through the hassles of a lawsuit.

The social networking giant Facebook is waging a war against Web 2.0 suicide sites (Suicide Machine and Seppukoo) that serve the purpose of eliminating the accounts of users on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, amongst others.

According to Facebook, Suicide Machine is violating its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR) by collecting login credentials from Facebook users, so access of Suicide Machine to Facebook has been blocked and further action is being considered.

As for those online suicide sites, they do not seem to flinch from Facebook’s threat. Suicide Machine has even announced the Facebook ban joyfully on its homepage.

While the duality between online suicide sites and social networking site is interesting, Facebook might have the upper hand in the arguments as the social network leader stated, “Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely”. Users wanting to delete their accounts completely sure would not have to recourse to suicide sites.

Google movies/films screenshot

Ever heard of Google Films? If you don’t have a sure, fast and informed way of knowing about movie showtimes near you, Google Films might just be what you are looking for.

Google Films does not only provide you with a list of most movies showing in theatres near you, it also allows you to search for a specific movie’s showtime.

Each movie listed on Google Films comes with a short summary. It also carries the movie’s genre, duration, rating (watch out for the little yellow stars), a link to its IMDB page and sometimes a link to its trailer on Apple.com. As the experience would not have been complete without a map, Google makes sure to provide you with one so you can visually access the proximity of theatres showing the movie that you are looking for.

A slight drawback of Google Films, however, is that it provides data for big towns mostly right now, so you wouldn’t be finding cinema listings near you if your town is a small one.

This is what you get if you click on “I’m feeling lucky” on Google’s homepage without entering any term in the search bar.

It is a countdown clock and it is counting down the seconds left till the 1st of January 2010.

Google is obviously up to something to celebrate the coming new year. Speculations are varied. While some are wagering on yet another prank on the part of the search giant, others are expecting a major surprise release for this new decade.

No statement has yet been made on the part of Google and this certainly is feeding all the mystery around this countdown clock.

It should be noted that the countdown clock is visible only on English-based Google homepages such as Google.co.uk, Google.au or Google.mu, as in my case. The same thing on Google.fr, the French homepage, gives this:

Will the surprise be in English only? We could bet it will. Is Google Chrome OS English release under way? The question remains…