It's your birthday and you can take advantage of that if you want to! Free meals, free ice cream, free drinks -- and not just the ones bought by friends. You'd be amazed how many cafes and stores and their loyalty programs are willing to give you free things for your birthday, so I've rounded up the best birthday freebies for you right here. (If your birthday is still ages away, just bookmark this page for future reference!)

It's that time of year again when 7-Eleven hands out free Slurpees and coffees to customers. However, there's a slight string attached (isn't there always?) Here are the details.

No one should buy their own drinks on their birthday. And besides getting freebies from your obliging friends, plenty of bars will give you a free birthday drink or two if you sign up to their newsletter. If you plan ahead, you can turn that free drink into a free bar crawl.

Does your kid love video games? Does he or she need some reading material that doesn't conjure up visions of school? Then check this out: Right now, you can get 12 free digital issues of Little Player, a video game magazine made just for kids.

There are plenty of resources that let you download stuff for free - but most of them aren't legal. To save your eternal soul, we've compiled a list of the best (mostly) copyright-free freebies that the internet has to offer - from books and artwork to music and video games.

If you've ever had an interest in learning about Buddhism, now is the perfect opportunity. You can take a Harvard University course on the beliefs, practices and scriptures of Buddhism online for free.

If This Then That is great for everything from managing your savings to hacking your Gmail, but did you know you can also use it to find free video games?

There are dozens of applets (IFTTT's name for any combination of triggers and actions used through the service) designed to help you track gaming giveaways.

Hotel living is sweet, especially if you leave room in your luggage for all the mini-shampoos and towels that come with it. Too bad that taking a break from your apartment for a night is so expensive you'd be better off just buying expensive shampoos and towels. That is, unless you can learn to scam your way into a free home away from home in a way that's totally legal.

Whether it's a classic such as The Great Gatsby, or a more obscure title such as A Farewell to Arms, you should avoid shelling out money for classic books. Quartz compiled a slew of free reading resources that are available if you're looking to stock up on great literature, and you can read them basically anywhere, even if you can't walk into a library.

We all like board games. But board games can be expensive, and some of us can no longer afford smashed avo brunches, let alone shiny new board games. But there is a cheaper alternative. Welcome to the wonders of Print and Play (PnP) board games.

Today (April 4) between noon and 8pm, Ben & Jerry's is giving away free ice cream in most Australian states and territories. There's no catch - just show up at a participating store and order your free scoop of delectable ice cream! Here are the details.

The Crumb Shed Sydney is a pop-up ice creamery that specialises in bespoke Golden Gaytimes ranging from Unicorn Breath (vanilla crumb, musk sticks, strawberry hard candy, popping candy, edible glitter) to Crumb Choc Millionaire (chocolate crumb, smashed potato crisps, desiccated coconut, 100s & 1000s). For today only, it's giving away free Gaytimes between 4pm to 6pm while stocks last. Here are the details!

Complaining to a company can be a good way to get free stuff as compensation. But who wants free stuff from a company they don't like? Try writing a letter to the companies you do like instead.

Yesterday afternoon, Telstra suffered a massive outage across its 3G and 4G networks which left thousands of people without mobile phone coverage. The telco has since issued an apology along with a promise of "free data" for all Telstra Mobile customers. Here are the details.

Companies love it when you 'like' their stuff on Facebook. They love it so much that they're willing to trade you discounts and free gifts just for clicking on that little upraised thumb button. This is why a dummy Facebook account is your friend.

From today through to 11th of November, 7-Eleven is offering free small Slurpees to its customers. To score your freebie, you'll need a voucher though. Here's how to get yours.

Today (23 September), 7-Eleven will be offering unlimited free top-ups with any Large Slurpee purchase. There's no limit on the amount of Slurpees you can drink (well, apart from brain-freeze, natch.)

AU UPDATE: Looks like it's too late to grab this - their site is showing a "509 - Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" message. Windows only: Grab a free copy of the normally-$20 DVD ripper FairUse Wizard 2, which converts DVDs to video files playable by a slew of devices. Back up your DVDs to your computer or watch 'em on your iPhone/iPod touch, AppleTV, Zune, Xbox 360, PS3 or TiVo with FairUse, which automatically rips and compresses the DVD using the DiVX, XViD, or H.264 codecs. FairUse can detect multiple television episodes on a DVD, too. For more tools like FairUse, check out our Top 10 free video rippers, encoders and converters. FairUse is a limited-time free download for Windows XP and Vista, and the FAQ says it works fine in Linux under Wine.