Free Game - Ballistik!

Today's free game at Sandlot Games is Ballistik! ($6.99 Amazon Game Downloads), another repeat from this past February.

Game Description

• 3D Graphics And Effects
• Break Down Cool Shapes And Objects
• Over 100 Levels
• Go Ballistik With This Brick Buster.

Go Ballistik over this new brick buster! Ballistik features out of this world 3D graphics and effects, 100 hand-crafted levels, 17 unique powerups and ten intense bonus levels! Break down buildings, knights in armor, even a surfer on his surfboard! Play it today!

Click HERE to sign up for the free download. For step by step purchase and installation instructions, see this post.

Book Giveaway - A McKaslin Homecoming

Harlequin has one again shipped me several books to give away. This time, it's A McKaslin Homecoming (out of print), by Jillian Hart. I have four copies to give away, so leave a comment to get into the drawing. As with the last one, tweet the giveaway, post it on your blog or facebook (or put in your newsletter, if you have one) and you get an extra entry. Leave a new message for each and an email address that I can use to contact you if you win.

Book Description
When contacted by her long-lost grandmother, Lauren McKaslin wanted to reconnect--with all the warmhearted Montana McKaslins. For too long, she'd relied solely on herself and her faith. But mistrustful lawman Caleb Stone stood in the way, and his questions about her were intimidating. Was his attention more than a protective instinct? Now that she believed in family again, perhaps this was also the time to believe in true love.

Free Book - jQuery: Novice to Ninja

jQuery: Novice to Ninja ($35.60 Trade Paperback), by AUTHOR, is free today (only) as a PDF download in celebration of Spain winning the World Cup.

Book Description
jQuery: Novice to Ninja is a compilation of best-practice jQuery solutions to meet the most challenging JavaScript problems. In this question-and-answer book on jQuery, you'll find a cookbook of ready-to-go solutions to help breathe life into your web page.

Topics covered include: - Scrolling, Resizing and Animating Webpage elements - Backgrounds, Slideshows, and Crossfaders - Menus, Tabs, and Panels - Buttons, Fields, and Controls - Lists, Trees, and Tables - Frames, Windows, and Dialogs - Adding interactivity with Ajax - Using the jQuery User Interface Themeroller - Writing your own jQuery plug-ins

All code used to create each solution is available for download and guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.

Click HERE to sign up for the free download.

Refurbished Kindle for $109!

When the Kindle arrived, many claimed it was too expensive and claimed that only when they were selling at $99, would they become popular. Well, after being the bestselling item (not just book or electronic item) at Amazon for a couple of holiday seasons, it's easy to see that they were way of base. But, the day of the $99 Kindles is looking to arrive anytime, now. Today, Amazon dropped the price of a refurbished U.S. Kindle $109.99. If you bought one in the last 30 days, I'd call to get a refund of the price difference. Be sure, though, that you use the Kindle support by calling one of these numbers: inside the United States: 1-866-321-8851, outside the United States: 1-206-266-0927, as regular Amazon support won't do a "price match."

Here is a current list of all the refurbished prices, which appears to subject to change at any moment. First, the US versions with Sprint wireless coverage:

• Kindle (6" Display, U.S. Wireless) ($109.99)
• Kindle DX (9.7" Display, U.S. Wireless) ($249.99)

These are the latest generation, global versions and have AT&T wireless coverage:

• Kindle (6" Display, Global Wireless) ($169.99)
• Kindle DX (9.7" Display, Global Wireless) ($299.99)

Borders Ebook Store a Bust?

As many of you know, Borders has been having massive problems with their new ebook store. When it first opened, the address they had published for months in advance did not work. They fixed that and launched a free ebook offer - some of us managed to get them all, but many who tried later got nothing but error messages and as the weekend started, all of the free books reverted to full price (and some who purchased the free books from inside the app were charged, before they all just started getting error messages). A problem with in-copyright free books, present when they opened, has remained the entire time: you can't get them into your library using the web site and many are impossible to find using search in the app (which does work to add them to your library, if you can find the book). And finding out about these freebies can be nearly impossible, as they have next to no search tools and they are buried in the free book list under a deluge of google freebies (many not even in English).

This morning, though, the site is entirely offline. A message is being displayed that they will be back after 8AM EST, but it's nearly 11AM now and nothing has changed. They have posted a one day coupon: THANKS712. Use it on the website anytime today (before midnight PST) and get 30% off list price of any time ... so long as it isn't on the long exclusion list (which includes all ereaders and many ebooks, most likely all of those on the Agency pricing model). Of course, it doesn't do you much good when the entire site is down.  Assuming they get the store back up later today, though, the coupon is good on many (if not all) of the paper books available (although I've found in the past, at least in the stores, that coupons don't work well on books that are already on sale, as the adjustment comes off the list price, not the current sales price).

In the meantime, if you didn't get the freebies, be sure to keep checking the Borders Free Books Offer page to see if it is live again. Supposedly, if they continue having problems, they may even extend the offer past the original July 14th deadline. I've seen a few reports that they had the prices back down to zero late Sunday, before they took the site down for maintenance. If you are having problems creating an account, be sure that you don't include any dashes or spaces in your phone number (and that you are using a US address, as, like B&N and Sony, Borders is only set up to sell ebooks in the US).