Freebies and free stuff

This Smile Pinki DVD is not only free, but it also won a 2008 Oscar for Best Short Documentary. What you might not realize is that it beat out the movie I entered for Oscar consideration that year. It was titled The Real Goob and was an expose on how difficult a blogger lifestyle can be. The gripping footage included an infected paper cut I got while opening the mail and a cramp in my wrist that was suffered after typing for 10 minutes straight! The masterpiece was capped off with the Great Freebie Drought of Aught Seven, where for a week I couldn’t find anything worthy of posting and instead took a nap every day.

Man, just thinking about those hardships makes my palms sweaty!

[via Pocket Your Dollars - thanks!]

EDIT: What the what? ALL THREE freebies that I posted today are now dead? Shouldn’t this have been in my horoscope or something?

This free Carfax Report offer is more of a playful freebie unless you’re in the market to purchase a car. I used my free report to look up my truck and was told that the odometer had potentially been tampered. Yeah, it’s my fault the makers only put five digits on the display so that after 99,999 it simply rolled over. Furthermore, I can’t believe I was caught! As soon as the first 100,000 were put on it, I raced around the country to secretly put on another 100,000 without anybody being any the wiser!

You know, I probably shouldn’t be telling this to tens of thousands of people. I’d make a horrible evil scientist.

Am I the only adult who will listen to these seven free children’s audio books while driving around thanks in part to the British voice they’re being read in? You could hire a British speaker to read the phone book and I’d not only want to listen, but feel as if I should wear a tuxedo in keeping with the elegance of the occasion.

The stories are a bit on the short side, but they might be useful for driving around town and doing errands.

If you happen to have an Amazon Kindle (you lucky dog!), then you might be pleased to know that there are a ton of free Amazon Kindle books available. It might be worth scooping up a bunch of them for later even if you’re not looking for anything new to read now.

I know some of my friends complain that reading books and newspapers on an electronic device is sacrilege and I sort of agree. However, as I recently packed to move, I realized I owned enough books to fill the Ancient Library of Alexandria. Captain Beatty would fry me alive if he discovered my hoard. I’d probably thank him too. Just the thought of moving them again is giving me a hernia.

To celebrate getting a million followers on Twitter (wow, HIF doesn’t even have nearly that many ), Amazon is giving away a $1.29 credit that can be used to download a free mp3 song. The credit will be applied to your account and most songs are only $0.99, so you can actually get a song and a third for free!

Amazon is also running an offer this month of 50 different albums for only $5. They have albums from bands like the Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, John Coltrane, The Roots, Willie Nelson, Gloriana, Marie Digby, Crystal Method, Fabolous and Shinedown. So…pretty much something for everybody. It might be worth checking out if you’re a music buff. Check out the banner below for more info.

And finally, as we’ve written about before, Amazon offers a hoard of free music available to anybody who wants it. The current count of freebies stands at 1,200, so never again shall you complain that you have nothing to listen to!

To celebrate their 60th anniversary, you can download up to 16 free Harlequin e-books, which all together retail for $60. While browsing through the available titles, I spotted one cover with a hunky guy and gorgeous girl locked in a deep embrace. That’s funny, I don’t remember there being any photographers around then. I should probably make sure there aren’t any paparazzi in my bushes right now.

I love the idea of Cellfire, but none of the participating grocery stores are near me. However, after seeing that they’d updated their list of coupons this morning, I had a look and realized that a Kroger store opened up just down the road. Score!

If you’re new to Cellfire, basically what you do is tie your grocery store rewards card to your Cellfire account. Then you can “load” coupons directly onto your rewards card and when you scan the card while checking out, the coupons will automatically be applied to your purchase. They also have various offers that you can load directly on your cell phone, though the value of those offers will depend on where you live.

As for the coupons, check out the full list below the jump!

Check out the latest Cellfire grocery coupons

We posted this free GeoTrax DVD offer last summer, but the previous link no longer works and I think this is a new DVD? I can’t be certain as I didn’t actually watch the movie when I got it. I figured I didn’t really need another reason to start drinking before noon.

If you’re still scrambling to come up with ideas for occupying the munchkins this summer, you might want to check out these free Apple Summer Workshops for kids 8-12. Apple Stores across the country will be providing kids with computers, digital cameras, and camcorders to help them create and produce digital masterpieces, such as slideshows, movies, and songs. They have a Camp Permission Statement with some additional fine print, but it sounds like a pretty cool activity to me. Then again, I’m a 26 year old who still plays with Legos, so I may not be on the cutting edge of what’s cool these days.

I opened the free Precious Places DVD website early this morning before I was even awake and let me say this: if there’s one thing better than coffee at jolting you into the land of the living, it’s having your speakers turned up to maximum volume while a girl’s Mattel cartoon starts screaming at you.

I had trouble getting this to work this afternoon, but it finally looks like they have their system set up properly.

[via the forums]