Aside from electronics, these guys made some bitchin’ 10 speed bikes in the 70’s. It was always a little trippy to see a bike with the Panasonic logo, kind of like seeing a Harley Davidson with an AMF logo, (Bowl and destroy!) or I guess more like when the tire company Bridgestone made bikes. What’s the point? Ryan Sheckler has a signature headphone model with Panasonic. There’s a commercial on the web. I don’t know if it’s being shown on TV or not.

Here’s a cool advertising gimmick for skateboard lessons. It’s a sticker that when placed in a sink makes an optical illusion of a tiny guy skating. Come on, you’ve all done it before, either with a fingerboard or in your imagination. This sink would be rad if I was only 3 inches tall. Very cool idea, but probably more of a proof of concept. The original source received it blindly, and you have to think they wouldn’t last very long in a public bathroom. Maybe a little longer if they were stuck in a toilet bowl instead. [Source: AdGoodness via Motivators.com]

Local Portland coffee roaster and media darlings Stumptown Coffee had an advert in the October 23rd issue of the Portland Mercury. Make a note of the location of the appendage holding the letter “T”. Stumptown is the coffee of choice in the tattooed crowd of Portland. When is Pabst going to get on the ball and shoot an advert at Burnside? They already runs ads with local bands. Donate that fee to the park. Larger after the jump.

This tip came labeled as “the latest in absurd use of a skateboard in a graphic,” and you’ll get no argument from me here. Looks like two pieces of canned clip art and about five minutes of work. IBM wants you to use some of their software, and in return they’ll send you a Chumby, which is actually a cool little Interwebs™ powered physical gizmo that would be fun to own as long as you didn’t have to pay for it. Chumbies (chumbi?) sell for $180, so that IBM course must be pretty expensive. See if you can get your boss to pay for it. Details online, but it’s a webmail campaign, so if it disappears you can see the ad bigger after the jump. Now that I’m looking at this, they might have actually had a guy jump out of a plane with a skateboard to pose this shot. – Thanks to Jeff Hottle for the tip.

After the very high rent Getty Images bought the very proletariat iStockPhoto they started sending out a weekly email called Hot Shots that highlights eight pictures from each service. Usually the iStock photos rival and sometimes even best the Getty choices, but not this week. Included in the iStock top eight is this shot of a guy who looks like he’s going to bail on his massive living room ollie over a couch. That’s one short takeoff. I’m not exactly sure what the point of this one is. I’m not an advertising genius, but the shot isn’t even well executed. Get some.

Wrapping up some longboard-centric items. First up is fashion designer Adam Kimmel’s promo film Claremont consisting of a couple of beardos screaming downhill in suits we can only assume were designed by Adam Kimmel. I’m not exactly sure how the tie in works, but it seems to be getting people talking. The right people? I can’t make that call. I thought it was a hoax at first, as far as Adam Kimmel being in the fashion industry, but it would have to be an elaborate one. The downhill action looks insanely fast. These guys even pass a car as well as passing the camera between themselves and shooting backwards. I don’t know how they do it, but my helmet is off to them. They make a certain German downhiller look like a wuss in comparison. Supposedly, German police are on the lookout for a man assumed to be “a professional stuntman” in full leathers who reached 62 MPH on a two mile stretch of the Autobahn after getting a tow in by a motorcycle. Pfffft! Talk to me when you do it in light blue polyester. Lastly, there’s the L.A. Times article titled More skaters switching to longboards, from the…

New cameras aren’t usually something I’d feel compelled to cover unless it somehow impacts skateboarding photography, but there are some extenuating circumstances here. First of all, they are using skateboarding a little in the promo materials, which isn’t a big deal by itself. Nice free advertising for Independent Trucks though… The D90 is two steps forward in the evolution of the camera I’ve been using for skate shots for the past three years or so, the D70. At the time, it was the first consumer digital SLR that had the option to use equivalent of a 16mm fisheye, my go to lens for skate photography. The D90 that was just announced improves on the D70 and D80 before it incrementally as well as adding the ability to shoot HD resolution movie clips up to five minutes long. The skatespot they use in the demo footage looks like it is in the Pacific Northwest somewhere, dare I say Seattle or Vancouver? One of our readers should be able to identify the location. I’ve got some stills pulled out plus more camera talk after the jump. [Source: Gizmodo]

Q spotted this and Dave Tobin told me about it. It was a newspaper insert advertising Qwest high speed internet.

U sho’nuf do be cookin’ in my book Your face is jammin’ Your body’s heck-a-slammin’

Back in 2005 I saved this image to my hard drive. Where did it come from? Right, this is Gizmodo shot of the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. I shrunk and doubled it up to save some space. It’s full size on the Giz, and it’s R-R-Radical!