T-Mobile Tuesday for May 9 offers RedBox Game Night, and two months of BOXED BOLD

If are a T-Mobile customer, Tuesday’s can’t get here fast enough, although the May 9 (2017) offer group is nothing to write home about. You get a 1-night game rental through Redbox (remember, this is one freebie per line, not per account, so claim it on all your lines ~ if you have multiple lines).

The other two freebies are glorified coupons, you get 30% off at 1-800-FLOWERS (the Mother’s Day theme), and you get a two months membership to the “Boxed Bold” bulk buying service. I’m not even sure what this means since Boxed doesn’t charge for a membership anyway. The FAQ section at the Boxed website says you get 3% rewards instead of 1%. The FAQ page there also notes that if you are an American Express member, you get Boxed Gold until 8/10/17, before everybody else (except for T-Mobile Tuesdays participants of course) can get it.

Unrelated to T-Mobile Tuesdays, but of interest to Boxed shoppers, if you search for “Boxed Bold” using the search box on their website, you will be shown the Boxed Gold Coins which promise $3 discounts on future Boxed orders. I’ve never ordered from Boxed, so I don’t know how any of this works 🙂

May 3, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

Choices for May 2017 Kindle First are up (pick one of six for FREE as Prime member)

May 2017 is here, and if you are a Prime member, this means you can get another brand new pre-release e-book for FREE! If you are not a Prime member, you buy one of the choices below for $2. The rest will become available June 1st and most likely will all be in Kindle Unlimited, so if you are a member of that program, you can just wait until June 🙂

So without further delay, here are the Kindle First choices for May 1st until the end of day on the 31st:

  • “North Haven” by Sarah Moriarty in Contemporary Fiction
  • “The Lioness of Morocco” by Julia Drosten, Christiane Galvani in Historical Fiction
  • “The Great Passage” by Shion Miura, Juliet Winters Carpenter in Lit Fiction
  • “The Hundredth Queen (The Hundredth Queen Series Book 1)” by Emily R. King in Fantasy
  • “The First Word” by Isley Robson in Romance
  • “Dead Certain: A Novel” by Adam Mitzner in Psychological Thrillers (already hammered in the early reviews)

My pick for this month is…

Book #2 is already scheduled to come out in September 2017, so you don’t have to wait for it like “The Winds of Winter” 🙂

May 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,

Digital movie for $5: The Handmaid’s Tale

Smartly piggy-backing on the buzz generated by the new TV series on Hulu, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Amazon Instant Video is offering the 1990 adaptation of the book on sale, in digital HD (without ads) for just $5. This is a digital purchase, not a rental! If you have any slow-shipping credits, they will be automatically applied to your order.

Most TV and cable networks (even HBO) make the pilot episodes of high-profile new TV series available online for FREE everywhere to generate interest and buzz and subsequently produce more subscriptions, but apparently Hulu is not taking that route, they are using the new show as a carrot to get people to sign-up for free trials instead 🙂 That’s where their priorities lie at the moment!

April 27, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With:

FREE: “Deathless” by Catherynne Valente (ends 4/16/17)

Unlike the Kindle First freebies that begin like clockwork on the first of every month, the Tor monthly e-book club is a bit more floating in time and space. I suppose it makes sense since they specialize in fantasy and scifi 🙂 Their April 2017 freebie, which you must needs claim by the end of day on April 16 (2017) is “Deathless” by Catherynne Valente.

As usual, you have to enter your email address at the eBook Club page and play the email ping-pong until you get a download link. Their freebies are DRM-free so you can load them on any device or app you want as long as it can read ePUB or MOBI. You can download or both of the formats. eBooks are small (compared to other media), so it doesn’t hurt to get both 🙂

April 13, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

Great Cordcutter Gift Card Deals at RiteAid with Plenti Rewards

Good until the close of business on Saturday April 15 in 2017, at Rite Aid brick and mortar stores, for those participating (or willing to join) the Plenti rewards program, there is a trio of loaded gift card deals for cordcutters!

  • Buy $50 Netflix Gift card, get 800 Plenti Points ($8 equivalent)
  • Buy $30 in Google PLAY or iTunes, get 500 Plenti Points ($5 equivalent)
  • limit two Neflix and limit two combination of iTunes and Google Play)

This is a very good deal, it’s an effective 16% discount on Netflix (you can load it up on your account in just a few seconds) and an effective 20% discount on Google Play (discounts are rare). It’s not a bad discount for iTunes, but sometimes you can find a 25% or 30% through store gift card promotions (Walgreens has a recurring buy $30+ in iTunes, get $10 Walgreens gift card, but it’s not running right now).

April 13, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , , ,

99c HD rental: Inferno (Tom Hanks)

If you like to rent movies in HD online, and watch without annoying ads, good until 4/17/17, Amazon Instant Video is offering 99c rentals of Tom Hanks’s Inferno movie. Once you rent it, you have 30 days to begin watching. Once you begin watching, you have 48 hours to finish it. If you don’t begin watching within 30 days, you lose it, and you get no refund.

PS: I don’t know if this is eligible for digital credits ~ if yes, then you can watch it for free if you have $0.99+ in slow-shipping or other Amazon promotional credits.

April 12, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With:

T-Mobile Tuesdays for April 11 get you a free digital magazine

The headliner of the Tuesday April 11 (2017) freebies for T-Mobile customers are headlined by a 1-year digital subscription to a magazine, from a choice of thirteen from the home, fashion, lifestyle and beauty categories, including heavy-hitters like Cosmo and Marie Claire and Esquire and Redbook. The complete list can be found in the app over there.

The other freebies are a continuation of the Dunkin Donuts $2 credit, and the first time (as far as I can recall) of RedBox. Yes a free 1-night movie rental. I suspect this will be a DVD, not a BluRay. If you have multiple lines, you should be able to get one per line.

April 10, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

“Space Above and Beyond” DVD set for $20 with free S&H

With this show not being able on any streaming services (I’m guessing it must be some kind of a rights issue?), it is hard to find it on DVD at a reasonable price. Which is why this is a exciting if you want to buy/watch this underrated scifi TV series.

Syfy’s (then Sci-Fi) “Space Above and Beyond” lasted one season (back then it was 24 episodes, that’s like two seasons of today’s shows) and did not get renewed. It has ahead of its time in the more PoV-style realism that became a lot more popular after Ronald D. Moore’s “Battlestar Galactica”.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the DVD set for Season 1 is available in “Used – Good” condition for $20 with free shipping by the Goodwill of Seattle through Amazon Warehouse Deals. This will ship directly from Seattle, so it is not Prime eligible. But everyone gets free shipping regardless of Prime status.

April 6, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

Free Chromecast after you pay for 1-month of YouTube TV

Cordcutter deal alert! If you live in one of the five regions that are the first to launch the new YouTube TV streaming service, you are in luck! Google is not only running a 30-day free trial, but if you stick around after the free trial and pay for one month ($35 per month), you will receive a free Chromecast device. Given the price of the Chromecast, this is almost like getting two months for free!

One sore point however is that you don’t have as much flexibility when watching on an actual television. You have to use a Chromecast or Android TV. There is no support for the wonderful Roku boxes or Apple TV or gaming platforms (XBox or PS4). I don’t know if they have plans to expand there or not.

Having to use Chromecast (the hardware device) can be annoying because it takes up one HDMI sport AND it needed to be powered, so you either have to use a USB port on your TV or attach it to wall AC to USB power, or rotate portable power bricks (like the ones that power smartphones) to keep feeding it.

I want a Roku app 🙂

Other than that, this is the best streaming service in terms of features. You get unlimited cloud DVR (that lasts up to nine months per recording), something none of the other services offer. You can link up to six Google accounts to one $35/month subscription. Three of those six subscriptions can watch live shows in parallel. That’s three live streams.

There’s plenty of sports channels of the ESPN, Fox and Comcast variety, however, the deal killer for some NBA and baseball fans is that the Turner networks are NOT part of the package at the moment.

NOTE: $35 per month is if you sign up with a computer or using Android devices. If you sign up through iTunes, Google passes YOU the “Apple tax”, you pay $40 per month instead.

April 5, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

April 2017 Kindle First Choices are out, pick one out of six

It’s a new month, and April Fools Day to boot, but this post is no Fools joke! It is a new selection of Kindle First e-books, where Prime members can select one of the six choices for FREE and also start reading them immediately. These are pre-release ebooks that will get released May 1st for most people. Non-Prime members can buy one of the six for $2 and read them right away as well.

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April 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,

T-Mobile reveals the April 4 (2017) Tuesday freebies ahead of time

T-Mobile typically waits for a couple days after Tuesday to reveal next week’s freebies, but April 4 is special, because that’s when they will offer a 1-YEAR MLB.TV subscription for FREE to all T-Mobile customers eligible for the Tuesdays freebies. They already did it last year, it’s true as it says, you get a free full subscription for the baseball season.

So today they spilled the beans via press release, the Tuesday April 4 (2017) will have a baseball theme. In addition to the MLB.tv biggie, we’ll get a VUDU baseball movie rental (I don’t know if that’s a store credit or actually restricted to select movies), along with the $2 Dunkin’ Donuts promo returning.

More freebies may get added later on, or not. Regardless, the 1-year MLB subscription is worth half a year’s worth of typical Tuesday freebies 🙂

March 28, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

FREE (no DRM) Book #1 of Stormlight Archive until Wednesday PM

This is a huge bang for the buck! A 600-page e-book is given away for FREE (and DRM-free) by Tor publishing. It is book #1 of a planned 10-part “Stormlight Archive” book series by Brandon Sanderson. Book #3 is coming out later in 2017, so the giveaway is go generate more interest in the book series and convert freebie-readers into life-long fans (Sanderson writes A LOT and he writes FAST). The book title is “The Way of Kings” – nearly 5000 reviews at amazon.com with a 4.7 out of 5.

This is an unapologetic fantasy book series but with very minimal sexual contest. To the point where the lack of sexual content requires more suspension of disbelief than the fantasy elements of the story 🙂

The giveaway ends Wednesday 3/24/17 night. It is open to US and Canada only due to publishing contracts and such. It is available without DRM in two formats, Mobi and ePUB. You can download both if you like. You have to enter your email address to get the giveaway. Tor is a very respectable entity, you don’t have to worry about abuse of your email.

March 23, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

T-Mobile Tuesdays for 3/21/17 has a $2 theme [Update: 25% off UE speaker]

UPDATE 3/21/17: but wait, there’s more! You may also get a second $5 Dunkin Donuts bonus. Check the website or app to see if you are eligible. If you are, it should look like this:

But if you live in a health-conscious region that drove the donuts stores away, you can’t use this 🙁

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March 20, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

Compete Series on Blu-Ray: “HeLL on Wheels” for $55

If you like to have TV shows on physical media, the complete series of AMC’s critically acclaimed “Hell on Wheels” is currently on sale for $55 with free shipping at Amazon by Amazon actual. This is not a lightning deal, so it will continue until it ends 🙂

As far as a I can tell (from looking at the box) a digital copy is NOT included. This show run for five seasons on AMC, with 57 episodes total. That’s about $1 per episode 🙂

March 15, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

How to redeem the 99c movie rental promotion with the Google Play Office Depot promotion

Google Play has developed new “technology” when it comes to running physical gift card promotions. They run a promotion at Office Depot until 3/11/17 that got you the bonus of renting any Google Play movie for just 99c (eg you could use it for the $6 Arrival rental) IF you purchase a plastic physical Google Play gift card at Office Depot.

But the promotion does not print at the cash register. It gets linked behind the scenes to your specific gift card when you make the Office Depot purchase. This worked on all gift card options, I did this with a $10 gift card.

So in order to redeem the offer, you go to your Google Play account and redeem the gift card the same way you do always. When you do…

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March 11, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,