Free pancakes at IHOP today

In celebration of National Pancake Day, IHOP restaurants will be giving away a free short stack of buttermilk pancakes from 7am to 10pm today. They do suggest that you make a donation to the Children’s Miracle Network or other local charities depending on where you are. Pancakes!

Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect, which allows third-party sites to add users through the Facebook friending feature, launched a Comments Box social widget to allow users to post comments that can be spread to other sites. More than 6,000 sites have integrated Facebook Connect so far and the feature continued to win converts leading up to the Oscars:

• WorldTV teamed with India’s ZoomTV to create an embeddable player and Facebook widget to allow users to watch the telecast and post comments to their friends in realtime
• Jaman.com launched a live status feed over the weekend using Facebook Connect, enabling viewers around the globe to share comments about the Oscars on the web
• CNN.com is teaming up with Facebook once again to offer live streaming and concurrent commenting during President Obama’s State of the Union Address at 9pm ET tomorrow

Source: Cynopsis: DIGITAL

Do Video Games Cost Too Much?

Valve’s Gabe Newell gave the keynote address at this year’s Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Summit about the cost of games, the effect of piracy, and how to reach new players. Valve undertook an experiment recently to test how price affected the sales of their popular survival-horror FPS, Left 4 Dead. They Reduced the price by 50% on Steam, which “resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title’s original launch performance.” They also tested various other price drops over the holidays, seeing spikes in sales that corresponded well to the size of the discount.

See the full article at Slashdot.

U2’s New Album Debuts on MySpace Music

It’s nothing new for albums to premiere online before hitting record stores (do those still exist?), but the debut of U2’s album on MySpace Music marks a big moment for the service. The latest release from arguably the biggest band in the world, the “No Line On The Horizon” album will be available exclusively on U2’s MySpace profile until March 3rd.

There are no embeds allowed, and you can’t even purchase the tracks yet through MySpace’s digital download partner, Amazon MP3. But you can stream the entire album for free and add any of the tracks to a MySpace playlist, perhaps giving you a reason to open up your MySpace account again if you’re a U2 fan.

See the full article at Mashable.

High Definition to Crash the Voice Party

The iPhone and the Apple App Store may have set a new standard for design and availability of mobile apps, but the iPhone operates within the same decades-old voice quality constraints as other handsets. Indeed, the rapid pace of handset innovation does not change the fact that AT&T, BT, Telefonica et al cannot improve voice quality. But a new generation of VoIP devices supporting G.722 and other wideband codecs threatens to disrupt a telcom industry built on mediocre voice quality.

On one hand, the analog infrastructure between the end user and the telco central office limits landline voice quality; on the other hand, the network equipment cell phone companies deploy sacrifices voice quality in order to make more efficient use of spectrum. While overcoming these limitations requires a complete overhaul of the telephone network, Internet-connected devices, represent the only practical means to build a High Definition Voice Network (HDVN). This is especially true when it comes to landlines; a G.722 wideband codec doubles landline frequency response and pushes fidelity toward an FM broadcast signal. (See a demo created by Siemens Gigaset.)

As with any technology rollout, there are identifiable obstacles ahead. Improving voice quality requires compatible devices at both ends of the connection, for example, and the specific communication contexts or content that require voice quality improvements remain uncertain. Notably, an emergent HDVN will not immediately enjoy the reliability and ubiquity of the traditional telephone network. And since it will require reliable broadband access, the early focus will be on fixed locations.

A similar list of issues did not, however, prevent the introduction FM, color TV, CDs, DVDs or HDTV.

See the full article at GigaOM.