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Archive for the ‘Freebies’ Category
Want to learn about the art of writing short stories from a successful Madison author? Then you may be interested in a free copy of “How to Write A Short Story” by Leslie W. Quirk.
That’s right! Not Lorrie Moore. Leslie W. Quirk.
Leslie Quirk graduated from Madison High School in 1900, attended the University of Wisconsin (but didn’t graduate), and went on to become a successful author of novels for young people, as well as a short story writer. In 1906, The Editor Publishing Company in New York published Quirk’s book of advice for aspiring short story writers — and most of it is still valuable, even if the market for short fiction may not be as welcoming as it was a century ago.
Quirk’s book is now available for FREE download at Internet Archive in a variety of formats, including PDF, which we think is the most convenient form. You may also read it online.
Alternately, for a couple of dollars you can purchase a rather pricey reprint of How to Write a Short Story; An Exposition of the Technique of Short Fiction.
There is also a FREE download of “How to Write a Short Story; An Exposition of the Technique of Short Fiction” available from Google Books.
Sign up for their newsletter, answer seven questions about your buying habits, and the folks at Snikiddy will send you a free coupon. Be sure to click on the “Get a Free Coupon” image to be directed to the page with the form for your name and address; just entering your e-mail isn’t sufficient.
What is Snikiddy? It’s a new line of kids snacks from a woman-owned company. You’ll find more information on the Snikiddy website, as well as in this recent article in The Wall Street Journal.
There’s no indication of when this offer expires, but it’s always best to snatch these offers up as soon as possible.
From March 7th to 13th, you can download a free copy of Human Goodness by Yi-Fu Tuan, Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, courtesy of the UW Press.
Here’s why: “UW Press has begun selling its e-books through its website for the first time, offering everything from novels and poetry to scholarly works on Classical literature and African history. Throughout the month of March the Press will introduce hundreds of new e-books on the site, making over 400 titles available by the end of the month.”
And here;s a bit more information about Tuan’s book: “Combining autobiographical reflection and philosophical investigation with sketches of exemplary men and women throughout history, Tuan probes the many faces of goodness—from simple courtesy to heroic acts of altruism—and suggests a common and complex thread which unites them.”
The download is available as a PDF. It’s 246 pages, but it didn’t take us long to download using our DLS connection.
Forgotten the story? Brush up on “Alice in Wonderland” before you head to a movie theater to see Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter by taking advantage of an offer for a FREE audiobook download of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, read by Michael York.
You’ll have to provide your name and e-mail address to AudioFile, which will then send you a link to the download provided by Blackstone Audio.
Offer expires 5 days, 11 hours, 53 minutes ago
Ben & Jerry’s has announced that its annual Free Cone Day will be Tuesday, March 23rd. Free cones will be served from noon to 8 p.m. at participating Scoop Shops.
“…ay, there’s the rub!” There are no participating Scoop Shops in the Madison area. Yes, there is a Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop in the Dane County Regional Airport, but an airport official told us the shop was unlikely to be participating in this event because it’s located in the departure area…after security.
The only other Ben & Jerry’s in Wisconsin is in Kenosha. Why spend time and gas money in the pursuit of a free ice cream cone when, for a lot less dough, you can enjoy some genuine Wisconsin-made ice cream from the Chocolate Shoppe or the Babcock Hall Dairy Store?
AVEENO® is currently offering a free sample of NOURISH+Hair Care and a coupon for $1 off AVEENO Daily Moisturizing Lotion.
Visit the AVEENO website to access these offers, both of which require you to supply personal information and answer some additional questions.
There’s no indication of when these offers expire, but its usually wise to take advantage of them sooner rather than later.
Become a Facebook fan of VitaminWater, surrender your name, address, e-mail address, and date of birth if you want to receive a coupon for a free bottle of “Connect” Vitamin Water. This offer is only available to the first 100,000 people who sign up, so hop to it if you want a bottle.
NB: According to a post on TechCrunch, this new flavor is the result of a contest VitaminWater conducted with its Facebook fans.
Thanks to It’s All Free Online for this tip.
Hewlitt-Packard offers a wide range of free online classes for PC users at its HP Learning Center.
You’ll need to register and create a password before you begin. However, you can look at the list of all available classes before you decide whether to register. The classes are grouped into the following subject areas:
- Digital photography
- Home Office
- Microsoft Office and Adobe
- PC Security and Maintenance
- Business Basics
- IT Professionals
- Graphic Arts
- Government and Education
We haven’t had time to test drive any of these courses, but we have used some of HP’s other online services, including one that helps you create your own distinctive greeting cards, and found them very helpful. Now if we could only find the time to send out those Christmas cards…
Thanks to Northern Cheapskate for this tip.
Hallmark, which is celebrating its centennial in 2010, has introduce a new kids collection offering “Fun ways to cheer them on!” and you may select a FREE card from the collection. No coupon is required.You may choose from nine different cards, some of which you can see online if you are willing to play around on Hallmarks’ animated site.
Here are the fine print details of this offer: “Valid through 3/14/10 while supplies last at participating Hallmark Gold Crown retailers in the U.S.A. only. Limit one free card from the Hallmark kids collection per customer.”
Coldplay is giving its fans an opportunity to download its album “Left Right Left Right Left” for free. Visit the Coldplay website, enter your e-mail address, use the pulldown menu to indicate your country, then click “submit.” You can begin your download when you reach the next page.
The designs on the free “Alice in Wonderland” Valentines cards from Disney are a bit weird and not altogether romantic, but that’s probably why Izzy the Intern likes them so much.
There are five different designs featuring characters from the Tim Burton-directed version of “Alice in Wonderland” scheduled for release on March 5th. You can download and print them from Disney’s Family Entertainment website. Or you can use this direct link to the PDF. We’re offering you both options because we had some problems with the download. When we finally achieved success, we saved a copy so we could check the file size: It’s a rather large 2MG file, so be patient.
All five cards are on the same 8½” x 11″ sheet, so they’re not very large — but hey! they’re free.
Disney is releasing Tim Burton’s 3-D version of “Alice in Wonderland” on March 5th, 2010, which should give you plenty of time to complete the delightful FREE papercraft version of the Cheshire Cat available on the fan blog “Alice 2010.”
In order to build your own Cheshire Cat, you’ll need to download and unzip a PDF file. You can find the link under the second image in the blog post. We tried it and encountered no problems. There are some assembly instructions in the blog post.
Have fun, but be careful: The craft knives and scissors you may need to assemble the cat are not children’s toys.
Thanks to Falkk at Paper Forest for the tip about this project.
Jaroslav Juřica, a graduate of the Swedish Lund University School of Industrial Design, has posted a very clever working paper pin-hole camera for FREE download on the Hubero Kororo website.
Hubero Kororo is a design group based in the Czech Republic and the written instructions for assembling the camera are in Czech. This should not prove to be a huge obstacle to success however, since (1) the instructions are amply illustrated and (2) you can always use an online translation tool such as Google Translate to help you convert the text to English.
Hubero Kororo does provide some background information and description in English about the Rubikon – camera obscura that you may find useful:
Rubikon is a cut-out, which becomes a functioning camera (camera obscura) after putting together. In 1979 the ABC magazine published a jigsaw called Dirkon, which paraphrased the at that time very popular single-lensed reflex cameras. Rubikon, as a redesign has come back to react to the digital techno.
The cut-out Rubikon was first published in 2005 in the 8. issue of the ABC magazine, 25 years after introducing Dirkon. Since that time it has been also published in foreign media dealing with photography. Rubikon is also used as a teaching aid at some schools of photography and elementary schools.
The Rubikon – camera obscura is distributed free of charge in PDF format. Before putting it together, read the manual carefully, please! I will be very grateful for any feedback, comment and idea for improvement.
Rubikon of author Jaroslav Juřica is subjected to Creative Commons license Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported Czech Republic.
If you decide to make this pin-hole camera, Izzy the Intern wants to again remind you to “Have fun, but be careful: Craft knives and scissors are not children’s toys.”
NB: We found some interesting Jaroslav Juřica designs for storage on another design blog.
Thanks to Shelley Noble at Paper Forest for this tip.
A few weeks ago, we received an e-mail from author Tim Dorsey inviting us to download a free copy of his novel “Atomic Lobster.” Alas, when we tried to do so, we discovered the download was a Kindle Edition.
We don’t own a Kindle and it’s not high on our list of things we really want for Christmas or Valentine’s Day or our birthdays. We prefer real books. We like the way they look and feel — and if we accidentally leave a paperback in the seat pocket of an airplane, we haven’t lost a lot of money. Forget your Kindle Wireless Reading Device and you’ve lost more than enough money to check a couple of bags and buy a pillow and blanket for your journey through the crowded skies.
But we regress… What we want to tell you about is today’s exciting discovery: Amazon is offering a FREE download of a Beta version of its “Whispersync” software that allows you to read hundred of thousands of Kindle books on your PC (sorry Mac fans your version is still “coming soon”).
We downloaded and installed the software on a PC. It was quick and easy. We opted not to register. This proved to be a meaningless gesture, since you’ll need to register with your Amazon.com account in order to download free Kindle Editions of books.
If you decide to give this Kindle software a twirl, here are some free Kindle editions you can download and read on your computer:
**Yes, we know what you’re saying right now: “Who in the world is John Newton and is he related to the guy who got hit on the head by an apple and wrote “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica?” You ask, we answer: John was an English Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain. He was the author of many hymns, including “Amazing Grace.” He doesn’t appear to have been related to Sir Isaac. Now you know.
Thanks to Christian Clippers for this tip about “Whispersync.”
Izzy’s in a tizzy about Cream of Wheat — but not the boring stuff his mother used to make him eat for breakfast. Cream of Wheat has two new flavors: SpongeBob SquarePants™ Bikini Bottom Maple Brown Sugar and SpongeBob SquarePants Chocolate Lagoon. Our inimitable intern has already requested his free sample of the latter.
If you’d like a sample of one of these SpongeBob SquarePants flavors (or any several other Cream of Wheat Flavors), visit this website to request one. You’ll have to surrender your name and address, e-mail address, and birth date and wait 6-8 weeks for your free sample to arrive.
If you just can’t wait, you could head to your local grocery store and buy a box. According to the folks at Cream of Wheat, here’s what you’ll get:
“A brand new Cream of Wheat® Variety Pack featuring SpongeBob SquarePants™ and his friends, containing 5 Packs of Chocolate Lagoon and 5 Packs of Bikini Bottom Maple Brown Sugar. Each serving is low in fat and an excellent source of iron, calcium and vitamin D. Kids will love the on-pack game and the tattoo prize inside. Moms can feel good giving it them!”
There’s no indication of when this offer expires, but we suspect it may not last long — especially since Izzy’s telling everyone he knows about it when he’s not engaged in serving as our persnickety proofreader. We think he wants his friends to give him their tattoo prizes.
Bob Birmingham, anthropology lecturer at UW-Waukesha and former state archaeologist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, will talk about “Spirits of the Earth: The Effigy Mound Landscape of Madison and the Four Lakes” from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Thursday, January 14th at the UW-Madison Arboretum Visitor Center, 1207 Seminole Drive.
Even if you can’t attend this event, you may learn more about the extant effigy mounds in the Madison area by downloading and reading a FREE PDF edition of the 11-page pamphlet “Native American Mounds in Madison and Dane County” from the City of Madison Planning Department.
NB: The pamphlet download is approximately 2MG
In the midst of a cold, snowy January — when the fragile glass Christmas ornaments were safely tucked away and the Valentine’s chocolates were still a distant promise — my grandmother knew what to do to bring sunlight and summer into the house: She sat down and began pouring through the myriad FREE seed and nursery catalogues that started to arrive in her mailbox after the New Year.
Whether you have a couple of acres, a plot in a community garden, or a few of pots on the balcony of your apartment, you, too can escape to summer by leafing through FREE gardening catalogues and making selections from the dizzying array of fruits and vegetable seeds they offer.
We’ve made a list of a dozen of our favorite sources for seeds (and fruit trees) and included links to their websites, as well as links to their catalogue request forms. If you’re worried about too much paper in your mailbox, most companies also have online editions of their catalogues that you may read online as flipbooks or download as PDFs.
Even if you order a paper catalogue, you may want to take a few minutes to browse each website for deals. Many had discounts and other incentives (free seeds!) for ordering early.
If you know about some terrific seed and nursery companies with free catalogues that aren’t on our list, please share your knowledge with the rest of us by leaving a comment.
That said, you’ll find our list after this jump: Continue reading Now’s the time to send for free seed catalogues
Amazon is offering you the opportunity to download a free MP3 recording of Lord Willobies Welcome Home – plus 11 other songs from “The Very Best of Naxos Early Music:”
• With all our hearts
• Missa Entre vous filles: Kyrie
• Basse Danse, “La Magdalena”
• Nova vobis gaudia Ciaramella
• Kyrie eleison (Christian-Arabic Tradition, Lebanon)
• The Lamentation of David
• Quam pulchra es, JD 44
• Ricercare No. 2: Ricercare secondo
• Tulerunt Dominum meum
• La mi la sol, la sol la mi: La mi la sol
• O vos imitatores excelse
This is beautiful, soothing music — and if you’re not familiar with it, you can play samples before you start your download.
You’re never too old to learn — and if you’re old enough, you can take advantage of a terrific educational freebie: Wisconsin residents age 60 and older may audit hundreds of UW-Madison credit courses at no cost.
According to information from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), Senior Guest Auditors, “sit in on lecture courses and learn from top UW faculty without the obligations of tests, papers, homework, or class participation.” If this sounds too much like your classroom experience in the Sixties, then you’re probably over 60 and this is your opportunity to learn all about the subjects you slept through when you were an undergraduate.
In order to become a Senior Guest Auditor, you must apply to and be admitted as a UW-Madison Special student and complete the class enrollment. According to OLLI, “There are seven steps, which must be followed in order to participate in the Senior Guest Auditing program.”
A general information session to learn more about the Senior Guest Auditing program is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 6th at the Madison Senior Center, 330 West Mifflin Street. If you plan to attend, please RSVP by calling (608) 262-5823.
If you wish to learn more about the Senior Guest Auditing program but are unable to attend the January 6th information session, you may call the Continuing Studies Adult and Student Services Center at (608) 263-6960.
Visit the Emergen-C® website and request some free samples of this product that’s high in Vitamin C and may boost your health and energy. You may also request samples for friends.
Fine print: “Limit one sample per email address, per household. While supplies last.”
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DISCLAIMER We post deals as we find them, but schedules sometimes change and everything has an expiration date. Prices and promotions are always subject to change without notice. It's always wise to call ahead and make certain a bargain is still available or an event has not been canceled.
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