This is advert for Vibe, an iOS app that Adobe can’t seem to decide whether or not to promote it as theirs or not. What does it do? It makes short videos with semi-automated cuts between selected stills and videos from your library, and adds a soundtrack to it. Then you can share it. Super. It’s a free app, and the sharing is meant to happen on the usual social media platforms, so you have to wonder what Adobe gets out of this.

Soloshot is a great piece of technology for those who can make use of it. It’s a camera mount that will track a radio tag for up to 2000 meters. Basically you wear it and your camera mount will pan and swivel to follow you. You can get one that is just a base that you add your own camera to, or they sell one integrated that also allows for automatic zooming. You can program camera moves into it. This sounds like a paid product placement, but it isn’t. Cool technology for sure, but not so useful for skate footage. If it works well and you need this kind of thing, excellent. As far as using it for skateboarding? I suppose if your friends are tired of shooting you… but as you know, good skate footage usually requires more intimate angles. That might be why the skateboarding part of the promo video only lasts about a second. I still want this, but have no idea what I would use it for.

I saw this add for the online freelance market Upwork.com on Facebook while I was neglecting my own freelance duties. Also, I’m not sure if I’m using the semicolon properly in this post title, so maybe copy proofing is not the job for me. Apparently this guy’s “highly specialized project” was shooting some sort of hybrid freestyle skateboarding/rap video. Unless that’s supposed to be a phone and not money. Freestyle selfies?

I don’t know much about 70’s era R.A.C.O. skateboards other than they loved to use imagery on their products, even their metal boards had some kind of photo sublimation. The collection of fiberglass boards shown here features assorted beverage logos for Schlitz, Budweiser, Olympia, Pepsi, and 7-Up. It’s almost as if R.A.C.O. was the NHS of the 70’s in terms of branded boards. We should be glad that truck hole patterns were standardized. Imagine how much of a pin in the ass it would have been to drill for trucks with a triangular pattern.

Thanks to Jim Goodrich for this photo of Health Net insurance billboard.

This is the second insurance company advertising pay-per-mile car insurance with skateboard imagery. This time it’s Metromile with a selfie stick, phone cam, Go-Pro, and electric skateboard all in the same ad.

Esurance has a commercial out for pay-by-the-mile insurance, this one specifically tailored to Portland customers, though I’m sure there are other cities too. Not only is there some longboard action in the commercial, there’s a bit of wackyboard footage in it too. Then there’s truBrain, an energy drink the is also supposed to boot your brain. “The world’ first nootropic drink.” I don’t know what the means,I guess I need some truBrain. They’re using skateboarding imagery in social media marketing and on their web site. – Thanks to Betsy Gordon for the truBrain tip.

Ernest Packaging has produced a great series of marketing videos called Cardboard Chaos in which they make unusual things out of cardboard, including snowboards, surfboards, and of course, skateboards. Professor Schmitt and Tony Hawk were brought in to help with the skateboard edition. The first try worked pretty well until they got to the frontside disaster. After they worked out the kinks they let Tony have a go at it. His verdict: It’s essentially as good as any other skateboard, but it’s too heavy. They left out some footage that would have made it more interesting, but perhaps diluted their message. I would have liked to get the details on which construction methods worked well and which ones didn’t. Between the initial testing they went from a board that felt light to one whose heavy weight was practically the first thing that Tony commented on. All this proves really, is that with enough fiberglass and epoxy, you can probably make a skateboard out of anything. Beanies off to Ernest Packaging for finding a way to get exposure through Extreme!™ sports in way that doesn’t turn skateboarder’s collective stomaches. Just think, you could make a skateboard out of recycled issues of…

I didn’t know Target had a skate team besides the Flying Tomato. They made a promo video welcoming Curren to the team with a clever moment where Curren sticks an employee name tag on a red shirt as he’s walking in. It also has the typical Rorschach test response elicited from any skateboarder who’s ever seen a Target store in the form of skate footage on those big red concrete balls that sit out front. So I guess that’s their way of letting us know those spots are not a bust? Probably not. I don’t think Curren Caples is a household name yet, so it’s unlikely we’ll see this air on television. Why are they welcoming Curren Caples to Target? Are the looking to replace the Shaun White clothing line at Target?

It’s an advertisement disguised as Muscle & Health magazine. Check out the beanie and please don’t tell him I called him a freak. – Thanks to House of Neil for the tip. I guess he’s into… err… men’s health.