Last night I found and flipped through my Moleskine from 2 years ago. I shared a few of the scans on my blog, but this one has to be cross-posted.

Shame I didn’t write down who said it.

As the summer heat and humidity blasts us with full force, I can’t help but wish that I was lying on a beach on a cool, temperate island somewhere. Or if not a beach, then maybe camping in a forest. Or boating in the South Pacific. The possibilities are endless. Or are they? With rising costs of gas (sorry kids, no road trips this year), travel is nearly impossibly expensive. Bummed about the weak dollar ruining your summer? Welcome the Staycation.

Over 600,000 Manhattanites that typically leave for the 4th of July actually remained on the island this year. Entering in the urban (and suburban) travelers vocab in the last few months, Staycation encourages those of us that can’t afford to jet set around the world to take advantage of hanging around and embracing a vacation in our hometowns. Those of us that are New Yorkers are the luckiest of them all.

New York in the summertime is filled with great opportunities to enjoy free entertainment to give us the illusion that we are, in fact, on summer vacation. Free concerts and theatre are happening all over the city. And my personal favorite is the free outdoor film screenings (ditch work early on Monday afternoons to claim your viewing spot in Bryant Park, the grass fills up super quick).

And if you do have some small cash to burn, it’s pretty easy to spend in this city….

Last night the lovely Leila twittered ” ‘You should buy jansens.biz’ - noah to jansens.” I, slightly inebriated, tried to buy Jansens.biz on my iPhone. Drunk me thought it worth the $19.00 investment for the humor value in owning it.

I’ve purchased URLs with much less promise of immediate gain. I bought [name of friend’s boyfriend I dislike].com with the hope that some day they would break up and she could use for it for much deserved revenge. I really don’t like him. It’s sat on the shelf for over a year now. If anyone has a use for bringbackyore.com let me know. I still can’t quite recall why I bought that one.

Sorry for the digression.

The godaddy website wasn’t cooperating on the iPhone. I gave up trying to buy it after 4 attempts and twittered “I just tried to buy Jansens.biz on my iPhone and it didnt work. I need a godaddy mobile.” Sure, not as funny, but at least wasn’t a total abandonment of the joke.

Today GoDaddyGuy, the official twitter account of GoDaddy twittered back. “@jliebma, GoDaddy.mobi is a mobile version of the Go Daddy site. It offers quick access to domain name purchasing. Hope you find it useful.” .

Not bad guys.

-J

GoDaddy Mobile

I recently stumbled upon a production company that creates panoramic views and virtual tours. A happy departure from the 360-degree tours of stainless steel condos and stained hotel rooms I typically find on the web, these guys are using fisheye lenses and rotating cameras to capture more aesthetically pleasing angles and images. New York City is particularly well represented with skyline views from the rooftop of Hotel Penn, Grand Central Station and Hoboken Pier — to name a few on offer.

The natural world is, of course, not to be forgotten, so feel free to take a deep breath and stare out into the abyss from atop Colorado’s Flagstaff Mountain.

What makes virtual panorama like these so appealing, I think, is not the quality of the imagery itself (or, even worse, the prospect of it supplanting physical experience), but rather the user’s ability to control it. Frenetically panning back and forth, from Grand Central Station’s floor to the Celestial Zodiac on its ceiling, is endlessly entertaining — and a lot easier on the neck.

I have been to Boston once in my life; it was one of the stops in my “visiting colleges” trip of 1998. While doing some research last week, I was suddenly reminded of one of the strangest stories I’ve ever heard – the one and only thing I remember from the bus tour I was made to go on while there – the Boston Molasses Disaster.

Nearly 90 years ago – ironically, as I’ll explain, one day before the Prohibition – a 50 foot-tall molasses tank exploded, sending 2.3 million gallons of the stuff down the streets of Boston. Imagine a 15 foot-high wave of molasses coming at you at 35 miles per hour. It flooded a few blocks up to waist level, crushed and swept away buildings, ultimately killed 21 people, injured 150 and killed 20 horses (some of the horses had to be shot because of how deep into the molasses they were, unable to move). Here is a shot of the NYTimes headline from the next day:

Apparently there were some structural problems with the tank, and it had been painted brown to camouflage the molasses leaking out. The irony I referenced earlier: this molasses was being fermented to make alcohol. Another theory is that the fermentation increased the pressure inside the tank, causing it to burst. Can you imagine how terrifying this must have been?

Envision a disaster scene with smashed buildings, overturned vehicles, drowned and crushed victims, and terrified survivors running away covered in molasses. Like the modern-day disasters with which we are unfortunately familiar, there was chaos, terror, buildings in ruins, victims to be dug out, trapped survivors to be rescued, rescue workers among the victims, and anguished families rushing to relief centers to find their relatives. It was like any horrible disaster scene, with the addition that everything was covered in smelly sticky brown molasses. [source]

In the end, it took 87,000 man hours to clean up the mess, and Boston Harbor ran brown for 6 months. Apparently all there is to mark the spot is a tiny plaque by a recreational complex. Why this isn’t more widely known, I don’t know. I was so fascinated by all the details just now that I kept interrupting a meeting to talk about it (sorry Eric).

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much for coming out last night - I had a great time talking with you! Just wanted to put some links up here to some of the things I referenced last night; hope you enjoyed, and have a great weekend!

Oh - and big thanks to Alessandra and SheSays for putting it all together

Kate Bingaman-Burt — Obsessive Consumption

http://obsessiveconsumption.com/

http://www.obsessiveconsumption.typepad.com/

The fantastic case studies on social media outreach from the BlogHer conference in April:
Thanks again, and if you have any questions, you can reach me here: amber_finlay@nakedcomms.com

amber

Thanks for coming to visit the House of Naked. I hope you enjoyed our chat about communications strategy today. Feel free to continue the discussion via comments below or contact me directly at kacy@nakedcomms.com.

Paul has just finished his presentation at his master class in Cannes, and we invite you all to join the discussion of his topic “Living Naked.” During the presentation, Paul also introduced Cannestags.com.

The website allows attendees at Cannes to register opinions on speakers, work, official events, and non-official events, in the same manner and structure of brandtags.com
We will start with general items (e.g., hotels, registration, french taxi drivers,) that apply to the whole conference.  Events will be added as they occur.  You can suggest things to be added here

Share your opinion, check out what everyone else has to say, and suggest additional topics for comment.

“In a data driven world, infographics are the new art.” So goes a quote by Ed Cotton that inspired Noah and Faris to write a piece for the latest issue of Contagious.

We have data coming out of our ears. There’s simply too much of it — it’s like drinking from a firehose, to borrow a phrase — and it comes at us from a myriad of sources. So we value and pay greater attention to those who are able to make some sort of order from the chaos, and then who can tell us what it all means.

There are lots of examples of this: The book Freakonomics is entirely about plowing through reams of data, for example. Another example is the aggregator we here at Naked built to stream all our collective twitters and links and pictures. Or there’s Alltop, a site that collects stories from all over the blogosphere and organizes them by topic. Or Critical Metrics, which bills itself as a “bibliographic database of highly recommended songs.” There are a ton more out there, I’m sure.

But Noah and Faris’s piece focuses on those who have taken all that data and made it look good. Infographics. Visualizations. The sorts of things that make the geek in us tear up just a little because it’s all just so pretty. (Seriously, I would sit there and look at The Wall Chart of World History for hours.)

They have lots of examples in there, like We Feel Fine (the pic above). But don’t take my word for it, see what they have to say for yourself. Faris talks about the piece on his blog here, and Noah does the same here. And Faris has the PDF for you to download here.

I’m heading to Cannes next week to judge the Titanium and Integrated Lions.

While there, I’ve been asked to deliver a Master class as a part of their “Young Lions” program, on Tuesday, June 17, 10AM local time. See the full schedule of classes here.

The topic of the class is “Living Naked.” I plan to discuss how Naked is born of the idea that brands now stand naked before consumers. But what does this mean for those of us in the communications, marketing and advertising industry? How does this challenge not only traditional agency models but also the very way we go about creating solutions? We approach our clients’ communications issues by “Living Naked,” a combination of our core beliefs and our unique culture.

In the spirit of Living Naked, I wanted to open the discussion here on house of Naked, with the hopes of continuing it at Cannes and beyond.

If you have any questions to suggest that will help shape the debate, please share them here. For example:

Our industry today is still built around distinct centers of expertise, how do we break down these silos and better manage turf, ego, and greed?

If your livelihood and revenue are dependent on a manufacturing output, can you be objective on the best business solution?

How can we facilitate creativity beyond ideas tied to specific channels, media or executions?

What do you think about the shift from brand messaging to brand behavior?

What is an idea without form?

Is an industry that has grown up informing messaging best suited to advise behavior?