I think what Howard is doing is "preciousss". It's a new style video blog called Wallstrip.

As I write this (traditional) blog, I often feel like the Tolkien character Gollum in the Lord of the Rings " a split personality (love and hatred for the golden ring) caused by several years of working for Humungous Bank & Broker.

To me, "Preciousss!" is cool.

For the video-blog, Howard wants me to write about Apple, which is something I find un-cool " not the writing, but the back-dating of stock options that embodies the bad side of capital markets, the penchant of gold-diggers who will stop at nothing in their quest for the Ring.

The bigger point though is that our digital universe is going GooTube. That gets me excited.

Google has agreed to pay $1.65 billion to a couple twenty-somethings by the names of Steven Chen and Chad Hurley. Steven and Chad are the founders of YouTube, which simply matches eyeballs (100 million pairs a day at present " soon to be a billion) with short video clips about anybody's slice of life.

The biz model is easy to understand " content-specific advertising.

Unlike Google's arguably unsuccessful foray into Maps, their GooTube will revolutionize communications and media. This Video on the Net will be (is already) the next great money pit of forward-thinking investors. Many ventures will fail; some will succeed like YouTube. I hope Wallstrip is one of those.

I hope it all works out because Howard Lindzon, Trader Mike, me, and a few others are creating a video-blog service for traders that could be revolutionary. I'll let Howard describe it, but to me this is not an experiment in counter-culture media; it's simply the natural evolution of blogging.

Apple, Research In Motion and Adobe are first up at Wallstrip. Howard wants us bloggers to write about our view of the CATALYST that has driven each COMPANY and to explore trends and give, in our own style, our opinions on the STOCK.

Howard has also asked a few of us in Middle Earth (aka Protectors of the Ring) to spread the buzz for Monday " people like Adam Bruss; Morris Callahan; Todd Belfer; John Cundari; Rob Segal; Brian Shannon; Michelle Leder; Adam Warner; Dave Landry; Bill Cara; Andy Swan; Roger Nusbaum; Trader Mike; Chartreuse; 1938 Media; Blair Portigal; Sonny Singh; Fred Wilson; Tom Peterson; and Kenny Finkelstein.

Cool people. Cool media. Coming Monday.

Here is an introduction. Me thinks it's preciousss.