Free phone call from Santa, courtesy of Google Voice

Google is once again busting out the awesomeness by offering a free phone call from Santa through their Google Voice service.

The setup is really straightforward, and although it’s mostly geared for kids, there’s a few options that can make it funny to send to just about anyone. It also has a email and Facebook and Twitter option if you want Santa to go all high-tech on you.

I’m getting on the sendacallfromsanta.com site and firing off a few right now.

Thanks Google!

Google is making their awesome 411 service walk the plank

Google is making thousands of phones cry this week by announcing they’re going to cut off their free 1-800-GOOG-411 service on November 12th of this year.

I mentioned this awesome service back in September ’09, and I’ve used it pretty much daily. It has been a lifesaver on my trips through the Texas yonderosa, and has consistently been on my top 10 speed dial favorites for over two years.

Google seems to be keel-hauling all ships that aren’t flying under the “Android” flag with this move, pointing out that you can still use Voice Input and Voice Actions on Android phones, but all other phones can suck it. (Actually, that “suck it” part was my interpretation of their press release about the Voice Input and Actions bit.)

Google still says “you can send a text message with the name and location of the business to 466453 (“GOOGLE”) and we’ll text you the information”, so that’s still something awesomely free.

I’m writing gblog@google.com to shamelessly plead for mercy myself.

Here’s the official press release from Google.

Free Wall Street Journal Audio Newscast : 800-WSJ-3916

I was reading the Wall Street Journal for lunch (yes, I’m a WSJ junkie) and found an interesting little notice on one of their financial pages.

Apparently, there’s a free Wall Stret Journal Audio Newscast Portal available for anyone to call in and listen to at 1-800-WSJ-3916 (800-975-3916). It works from any phone and is toll free.

Once the automated system picks up, you will have the following options to pick from…

  • Pressing 1 gets you the “Wall Street Journal report”, a two minute update on breaking news that’s updated twice an hour.
  • Pressing 2 gets you the “Dow Jones Money Report”, a one minute update on what is going on in the markets that’s updated every hour.
  • Pressing 3 gets you the “Whats News” headlines from the Wall Street Journal Online, and is updated three times a day.
  • Pressing 4 gets you the “Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing”, which gives all the tech stories of the day and is updated twice daily.
  • Pressing 5 gets you the “Morning Watch Stock Talk”, which reviews what is currently moving the stock market and is updated every weekday morning.
  • Pressing 6 gets you to “Your money matters”, which reviews advice on budgets and personal financial stories and is updated every weekday morning.
  • Pressing 7 gets you to “Money Markets and More”, which reviews the day ahead on wall street and is updated every weekday morning.
  • Pressing 8 gets you to “Wall Street Journal This Morning” which covers early morning news and is updated every weekday morning.

You can press the * key to go back to a previous menu at any time.

This is a pretty cool freebie!

EDIT : Newspaper Ad Scan!

WSJ Audio Newscast

How to get older free tracks on Tap Tap Radiation for iPad

Tapulous offers everyone who downloads any of their iPad or iPhone Tap Tap games a free subscription to their music newsletter. In each newsletter, there’s a link for that week’s free music track you can download for the app you’re using.

If you play Tap Tap Radiation on the iPad, I stumbled across a way to get a few of the older “free” tracks. Just copy the current link and paste it into Safari on the iPad…

http://web.tapulous.com/email/weekly/2010/79/ttrad.php

…and change the number before /ttrad.php.

For example…

http://web.tapulous.com/email/weekly/2010/75/ttrad.php
and
http://web.tapulous.com/email/weekly/2010/74/ttrad.php

…will take you to different songs to download for free to play.

I went back to 68 and didn’t see anything past that, but for those of us who just got this app, this adds a few more tracks to play while we’re passing the time.

FREE Kaplan books on iTunes for iPad (or iPhone) Reader!

Kaplan Publishing is giving away a lot of their high-end eBooks for free on the iBookstore August 24 -30th!

The official giveaway site says all you need to do is “visit www.kaplanpublishing.com/iTunes on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.” From there, it launches the iBooks application on your iPad (or iPhone or iPod Touch) and takes you to the giveaway page on the bookstore site.

Looking at the link from my iPad, they’ve got

  • 15 books in the COLLEGE section (SAT, ACT and PSAT books)
  • 10 books in the GRADUATE section (GMAT and GRE books)
  • 22 books in the LAW section (a ton of PMBR books as well as general information books)
  • 19 books in the MEDICINE section (MCAT and a lot of general information books)
  • 14 books in the NURSING section (both CCRN and NCLEXRN and some general information books)
  • 12 books in the EDUCATION section (Practice question books and a lot of general information books)

Don’t forget to hit the tiny little SEE ALL button by each category to get to all the free books because the main sale page only lists 6 books for each category.

My only complaint is that you have to click each book to download. There’s no batch-download.

But aside from that? Totally geeked out.

Thanks Kaplan!

Free child safety tattoos at Protection One website [PHOTO]

A website called Protection One Security is offering a set of six free child tattoos if you fill in your mailing information on their website.

I recently received my sample set and they look pretty good.

Protection One Free Child Tattoos

Protection One Free Child Tattoos

They’re pretty straightforward. Rub on. Use a sharpie to fill in an emergency contact number. Alcohol off.

Since my nephew likes tattoos, this should be a fun little backup to have whenever we hit the beach or go to a local traveling carnival.

Here’s the link for the free Protection One kids tattoos.