Hey, It’s Free!

I won’t lie that I’m biased with this upcoming election, but I’ve sworn that I’ll leave that off of the front page here.

So, in the spirit of being unbiased, I realized that just sharing this free Obama button from MoveOn.org, would be partisan of me. To express the HIF bipartisan spirit, if you actually go to McCainStore.com, you can send a SASE to them and they’ll mail you a free McCain bumper sticker.

Wow, this reaching across the party lines thing isn’t that hard to do at all now…

[via the forums and the Google]

This economy sucks, srsly. And if you needed to know otherwise, well, look at it this way: in the 1930’s, if you had $.60 in your bank account, you’d have enough money to eat for at least a day and probably buy a newspaper. Now? You can buy a stamp and maybe a pack of gum. Try living for a day off of stamp glue and gum alone.

Enter HippoPost.com. Instead of buying that stamp and the pack of gum, you can now log in online and daily send out up to 2 free postcards! So, if you’re away on vacation and have your digital camera, laptop, and free wi-fi at your hotel? Forget spending a buck on the postcards, just take a family picture, add on some “Wish you were here” sentiments, and upload and send away.

Sure, they put some advertisements on the postcard, but they print it and pay for the postage and everything! And with the way costs are rising, well, that $1.50 could soon buy you two stamps and a candy bar.

[via the forums]

I had never heard of World Market before, but according to their store locator they’re all over the place. I guess that means I can actually get one of these free 100% cotton tote bags.

I don’t think you actually have to print the image I linked above though. On World Market’s main website, they have this image that simply says come on into their store and get a free bag. So I’d use the store locator and call ahead just to make sure of the specifics. I hate it when a company’s website has conflicting instructions! But I try not to complain, because, hey…it’s free!

[via Moose]

I seem to remember that the last time these free American Greeting cards from Wal Mart were around, they sent out three different samples. Who knows if that’s what they’ll do this time as well, but on the off chance that somebody in charge of this freebie is reading HIF right now, I’d like to make my pitch as a Greeting Card Author. I think I’d be great at it and have included a few samples of my work below:

Roses are red, Violets are blue, Hey look over there, That cow just said moo.

That could be used as a fun road trip card. Or maybe for cow enthusiasts! But what about a more intimate card? Oh, I’ve got just what you need:

Roses are red, Violets are blue, Something something something, I love you!

See, the three somethings throws the reader off. They’re like, “Huh? What the crap?” But then the ending makes them feel better!

I’ll be awaiting your response and will accept payment in the form of burlap sacks stuffed with cash.

[via Cara]

A friend of mine told me about this one in class and after hearing about it? Oh man, this might be the coolest free service that I’ve heard of in a long time.

ChaCha is a text messaging service that if you have a question? You just ask them. Just text your question to 242242 and they’ll send you a text message with the answer within the next few minutes (varies with the time of day). Believe me, I asked them about woodchucks chucking wood, airspeed of unladen swallows (african AND european), and George Carlin’s certain family unfriendly words. And I got good answers back. Of course, I did ask some serious questions tonight too, but those are never the fun ones… You can also get weather and stocks from them too for wherever you happen to be.

The online aspect is cool as well. You register and tell them your cell phone and then online you can access your most recent questions if you happen to be away from your phone as well as ask questions from your computer too.

Needless to say, standard text messaging rates apply, but it makes a good time killer when you’re running around on the go and need to know information… Or if you really needed to know things about swallows…

[via the forums with thanks to my friend Amrah]

I’ve started collecting a fair amount for free stickers lately, but I don’t post too many of them on here because a lot come from small Mom & Pop type places that run out fairly quickly. This free Forever Bluegrass sticker’s website says they want them to be shown all over the world, so here ya go!

As for mine, I’ll probably stick it on one of my many coolers. I can barely open half of them because they’re covered in so many stickers. There’s probably a few stranded beverages trapped in one or two of them, just waiting for me to rediscover them and enjoy their tasty goodness.

I try to steer clear of politics or religion here on HIF, but free is free and right now you can get a free Obama ‘08 sticker from Moveon.org.

[via Froggie]

I feel like I’ve been in out of space between my homework and following and writing about politics, but this one really takes the cake.

You can actually send your name to the moon. I mean, really, how cool is that? And they give you an immediate nice looking certificate that you can print up at home.

So what can you do if you’re a teacher or have kids to motivate? Well, I’d put their names in on this and then bring the PDF files that you get from the certificates to Kinkos and put them on some nice paper for them. Now THAT’s a cool incentive for kids, if you ask me…

[Thanks Cara!]

Every DHL freebie I’ve posted in the past has come as promised, though it usually takes a while to arrive. Ironic, huh? Hopefully this free DHL road atlas comes in time for people to take a roadtrip or two this summer. Actually, thanks to the high prices of gas, I doubt many of us are going on any long distance trips this year. I’ll just have to make a vacation out of walking to the mailbox and getting my freebies every day!

I’m not sure if they’ll send me this free flip-top calculator since I’m not a member of the Association for Computer Machinery, but I do know that I can use a computer and then operate machinery, so I think I should be allowed into their association. If not, I say we start our own, just like we’re going to start our own country! Ok, so that was a little random, but I’m in a goofy mood today and my thoughts are all over the place right now.

[via Moose]

Ten free brownie points to the first person who can figure out what practical purpose this free Bass beer brolly serves. I’m gonna go with “pointless,” but come on, it has to do with alcohol so it must be something worthwhile.

Also, sorry California residents, but apparently Bass beer doesn’t like any of you and thus won’t send this freebie to ya. Don’t shoot the messenger, I didn’t make the random policy!

[via Mag]

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been walking out the door to go to a party or event only to realize you don’t have a greeting card on hand. So you rush to the store, pick out the first semi-decent looking card you see, scribble your name on it, and then realize later that it’s not even the right type of card. For the record, I had both of my arms up in the air just now. At the last wedding I went to, I gave the bride and groom a card that read “Get well soon, my favorite grandson!”

Oops.

Hopefully this doesn’t happen too much in the future though, as I just ordered three free greeting cards that were posted to the forums this weekend. Hooray for a little less social embarrassment in my life!

[via Moose]

Continuing along with my free download offering from the other days, I’d like to share another personal favorite musician of mine who has a ton of awesome free downloads on their site. Steven Foxbury. Just head over to the third dot on the site there and its for the music page, and there are 2 EPs and 1 LP worth of music, all available for your listening pleasure.

I’ve been lucky enough to see Steve open for 7M3 twice, and each time I see him, he gets better and better. A great lyricist and all around enjoyable listen.

And if you like that, well, I’m still surfing, but I’ve found a few other artists here or there that I might have to start sharing full free downloads from the musicians themselves. Some musicians allow it, others don’t. Just need to keep your eye out to find a few of them…

Back later with more, folks… I just pulled this one from a draft that I’ve had saved for a while, seeing I’m still settling in from the wife and I moving this past weekend…

[via the forums]

Well you might remember a few weeks back when I provided a nice little link for a free download form Aaron Lee Tasjan? Well if you liked Aaron and thought maybe that was a little too folky for you and wanted a taste of some glam or a bit more rock? You couldn’t have looked any further than this post, honestly.

A band that Aaron’s in called Semi Precious Weapons is giving away their debut 10 song album for free on their website. Yup, just head over to their website and head over to their shop and when you put in your name, zip, and e-mail? They e-mail you a nice little link to download their album.

So there you go, something rockin’ for ya to kick your week off to. Heads up, some of the lyrics are NSFW and Parental Advisory should be noted, so keep that in mind when you do enjoy…

[via the forums]

I’m only posting this free ICE sticker (In Case of Emergency) because it reminded me of my college days. The sticker is meant to go on your phone so as to alert medical crews that you have emergency contact information in your cell phone. But back in college, my buddy Ronak was part of the ICE group - Indian Cultural Education group. You could only join it if you were of Indian decent, which kinda defeated the purpose to me but whatever, and as a result Ronak pretended like it was some secret organization akin to the Stonecutters.

Now if you’ve gotten to know me over the years, you know I like to do random and stupid things. Thus, I ran with his idea and pretended the ICE group really was a secret organization. I started making up chants and dances and handshakes that I imagined a secret organization might have. I’d dance around campus as we walked to and from class, doing me secret ice dance (which involved me throwing actual ice cubes in the air to try and make something like a Batman signal) and people would think I was nuts. To this day, whenever I see an old college buddy from Freshman year, I do the ICE dance and pull out the secret code to see if they still remember it. Ahhh, to have that much time on my hands again!