Surf the web while surfing Mark 2 by Eileesh Buckley

By Eileesh Buckley. 12 years ago Intel’s marketing team in England cooked up the idea of “surf the web while surfing” as part of their promotional activities for Intel Centrino. Title image from pixabay.

This week, Samsung’s marketing team in Brazil revisited the theme using a smartphone to power an information display embedded on a surfboard.

In 2004 tablet computers were not exactly commonplace so, the Intel team and their chosen surfboard shaper had serious challenges getting a screen with internet connectivity built into a surfboard.

The Intel Surfboard was a longboard (9ft+), it won numerous marketing awards for the team behind it as it was a brand new approach to promoting technology.

The surfboard was created specifically for a surf event Intel was sponsoring, and they were pushing hard to promote their relatively new wireless connectivity on the beach.

Samsung’s iteration is able to take advantage of the huge progress in technology since that time.  This time the surfboard with communication capability is a high-performance shortboard.

Truth be told, the only surprise in the Samsung development is that it has taken over a decade to happen.

The online reaction to the Samsung surfboard has generally been along the lines of “they can’t be serious” from tech people, and “Medina is already a machine” from the surf fraternity.

The Medina in question is Gabriel Medina, currently ranked 18 on the World Surf Tour, coincidentally that tour is sponsored by Samsung Galaxy, the next event is in Brazil and Medina is the highest profile Brazilian pro surfer.

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