International surfing brand Rip Curl unveiled several unique digital collaborations this year, including a global webcasting partnership with Livestream and an online boardshort campaign with digital agency R/GA, and the brand has more exciting news with the recent launch of a customized Rip Curl edition of the Mozilla Firefox browser.

The ‘Rip Curl edition of Firefox’ is available in five different languages for free download around the world and comes preloaded with a custom Rip Curl persona, bookmarked pages, pre-pinned app tabs to Rip Curl’s event and product websites and gives you instant access to Rip Curl’s Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media pages.

Dane Sharp, Rip Curl’s International Media Manager, coordinated the project:

“This was a really cool project for our digital team and we’re stoked to have worked with the creative folks at Mozilla on this browser – they’re a very clever and very passionate bunch of people.”

“It’s only the start of our relationship though, because both companies share the same enthusiasm for technology and innovation, and pride themselves on being the leaders in their field. Rip Curl is the ultimate surfing company and Firefox is the ultimate web browser.”

Chris Beard, Chief Marketing Officer, Mozilla, was equally as thrilled with the collaboration:

“Mozilla Firefox is aimed at putting you in the drivers seat of your web experience and we are delighted to offer surfing fans a way to stay in touch with Rip Curl directly from the Firefox Web browser. It’s a great partnership enabling surfers everywhere!”

Co-promotion of the ‘Rip Curl edition of Firefox’ by Mozilla and Rip Curl is currently underway via both company’s respective newsletters, Facebook & Twitter accounts.

Visit www.ripcurl.com/firefoxbrowser

The inaugural Asian Surfing Championships Award Party will be held on Saturday evening starting at 7:00 pm at the Wave House Sentosa on Sentosa Island in Singapore to celebrate and honor the Asian region’s first professional surfing champions as well as to announce the media partnership of the ASC with the Outdoor Channel.

The ASC is proud to introduce to you Asia’s first surfing champions from the inaugural 2011 Asian Surfing Championship (ASC) season.  These professional surfers have traveled throughout the Asian region this year and competed against the best surfers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore and other countries to achieve their goal and place in history as the first-ever Asian regional surfing champions.

The Outdoor Channel in partnership with the ASC will be bringing future ASC events into living rooms all across Asia and beyond, so everyone will be able to learn about and experience the thrill of surfing as the ASC tour takes them to in the many beautiful beaches in the Asian region via their television sets and the Internet.

At the ASC Awards, champions will be crowned in four categories, Open, Women’s, Longboard and Masters, with the general public and media all invited to meet and greet these dedicated athletes. And the champions are:

Open Division Champion:  Raditya Rondi from Bali, Indonesia

Women’s Division Champion:  Yasnyiar “Bonne” Gea from Sumatra, Indonesia (current Indonesian Women’s Champion)

Longboard Division Champion:  Arip Nur Hidayat from West Java, Indonesia (current Indonesian Longboard Champion)

Master’s Division Champion:  Decha Sithidej from Phuket, Thailand.

The ASC Awards will be held in conjunction with the B.Y.O.B (Bring Your Own Board) event that includes a full day of Flowboarding, Skateboarding, Wake Surfing, Stand Up Paddling, BMX and Bodyboarding, followed by the awards presentation and a night of partying with top local bands and DJ’s.

For more information on the B.Y.O.B event

The Asian Surfing Championship Awards is brought to you by the Wave House Sentosa, the Surfing Association of Singapore, and Bigfoot Industries with the support of the Coca-Cola ISC Tour, Billabong, Oakley, Quiksilver, and Rip Curl, and media partners Outdoor Channel, Surfersvillage.com, Lines Magazine, Baliwaves.com, Thai Surfrider Magazine, SurfTime Magazine, and Royal Video Magazine.

www.asiansurfingtour.com

BOLTS of lightning flashed in cobweb patterns overhead, the gray and storming sea sending wave after wave that crashed on the beach behind us. We paddled our borrowed surfboards furiously southward to avoid the whitewash, then, one by one, turned into the arching faces and rode them to shore.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. There is no surf in Greece, fellow boarders had told me when I was planning my Greek surf safari. Yes, they said, Greece is surrounded by three seas and boasts nearly 10,000 miles of coastline and about 6,000 islands and islets that could be suitable for surfing. But this is the Mediterranean — too sheltered for wind and water to produce waves any bigger than a foot or two, none of which would be surfable.

And yet a quick Internet search suggested otherwise. About a half-dozen Greek Web sites advertised photographs of big, beautiful waves crashing on both the Ionian and Aegean coasts. Not storm-ripped slop but smooth, Hawaiian-style breaks with not a soul in sight.

In mid-September, during a trip to Greece, I decided it was time to see for myself. I selected a beach on the Ionian Coast at random from a tourist map, threw my swim trunks and some surf wax into my rental car, invited two new friends along, and headed west from Kalamata to the tiny port town of Pylos.

read full story at NYTimes