I was visiting the kickapps office last week in New York and they are on to something big. I think WordPress, Google Blogger and Typepad could be the real launching pad for communities of the future.

If WordPress were to roll out kickapps feature set within their software, the real community building could start and get viral from the outside in (or inside out :) ) .

My friend Bijan at Spark Capital was an investor in kickapps and I am excited to see what they create.

What a great trend unfolding here in social networking and community building on the net. Mucho money to be made here despite the noise. The winners will be gigantic.

I decided not too long ago to simplify my investing strategy. I trust myself and prices. I stick to a money management plan. The prices don’t lie.

Trend following is really about prices in the end. I don’t get mad at stocks anymore. It’s not their fault they do what they do.

When CROX hit an all-time high not to long ago, I wrote one of my favorite posts. I got long on a simple signal – an all-time high. I followed it with another post as CROX kept on chugging. Yesterday, it hit $40. I have no idea where it will be tomorrow. Who cares?

I am not smart or stupid. With CROX, “The Price just HAPPENS to be Right” (a little Bob Barker retirement love), for now :) .

In August, Forbes wrote an article that panned the Company. The stock was at $24. They told their readers to dump the stock. The author made no position disclosure. She did make a nice case for hating the stock and expecting the bottom to drop out. That only cost investor’s that followed Forbe’s opinion 65 plus percent in two months. Nice.

At $28, Tim Beyers of the Motley Fool had a headline that said SHORT CROX. His awesome OPINION followed. He had no position. Sweet.

Smarter people than me have said : “Opinions are like assholes…”

I have many opinions, but I follow the trend. CROX is trending nicely. The business is trending unbelievably well. That is not an opinion – look at the numbers. The catalyst in MY mind going forward is private label. It is not a decision that I base my purchase on, but something that I feel. It is irrelevant to my position once it is in place.

The CROX post above made me think about product “tipping points” and Web 2.0. As I researched my original CROX post, I found hundreds of Flickr photos that CROX owners took of their shoes. Why?

Long story short, I asked Fred Wilson if he knew of someone that tracked social sites for trends. Of course he did! Today we introduce the Wallstrip widget powered by Infofilter.

I think we are on to something. It’s about public consciousness. If it is important enough, important and powerful trends should show themselves and persist in Web 2.0 social sites like Flickr and YouTube.

The widget is not perfect – YET. That would not be any fun. I FEEL like we are on to something and it is fun to experiment and get started.

Disclosure – Long CROX and own “knockoffs” :) .

PS – I will state my opinon often about stocks, The Phoenix Sun’s, other bloggers and some random stuff. Do yourself a favor if you read them – ignore them.

PSS – working on an ABOUT section for all my posts over at Wallstrip.

ABOUT Howard:

He’s an ass. Don’t believe me…watch the show :) .

Thoughts?

Apple had great earnings and a pop, we had no lawsuits for copyright infringment for our RIMM show, Chipotle’s showed us that they can goof around and still do their job and we had some shocking fun with Adobe and a great conversation on where it could go. The conversation and comments all week were great. We have great, highly focused information widgets from Buzztracker and Instant Information ,

Today we have a gossip show with Dealbreaker . It is a fun change of pace from the daily show and stock opinions and we are working with Michelle Leder of Footnoted.org on a format for a show as well.

We are learning as we go but everybody looked natural and the writing was excellent all over the site.

I have always wanted to explore Wall Street, trading and investing from the company side of things. Flip the model. It is the companies, the brands that the employees build , the employees, the traders, bloggers and foot soldiers of Wall Street that are totally ignored by big Media. All day, we see talking heads, flickering prices, opinions from managers at giant mutual funds and the analysts from banks. They have become the stars.

It seems as if the media has forgotten about the company and people behind the scenes that may not be paying their advertising bills, but our buying the stock and relying on the capital markets for a living. Good for us.

Since no journalists were interested in asking about our audience, just questioned it and whether there was any, who am I to tell them :) .

We will just go about making shows about the companies that America and the rest of the world are clamoring for and discuss whether they will be clamoring for them in the future.

Have a great weekend.

I was reading Jeff Matthews tonight and his post – Where were you ? It is a good one. Honest. He admits the following:

I rode up the elevator with another guy, speculating on which airline the plane belonged to, because the stock would get crushed on the opening. It sounds callous, but that’s how you think in this business—or did, before 9/11.

That’s the nature of the beast I guess. I remember shorting Brocade and some Spiders and was complaining about the shitty fills. Oy.

My fund had really done really well from it’s start in 1998 right up to 9/11/ 2001. I was pretty flat the market for most of the year. I was hosting a one minute stock show on Howard Stern (for Arizona) and that whole year was just a smart ass. On the morning of, I was doing my one minute stock report about 2 minutes after the first plane hit. Mark Haines was speculating that a small commuter plane had flown into the Tower.

I started the broadcast with the following: “A disgruntled E-Trade daytrader has flown into The World Trade Center.” It was live and I could not take that back. As I finished, I knew I had said something so really stupid. I could not take the words back. They say that Comedy = Pain plus Time. No amount of time could make this funny.

I wish I could take that back. I am really Sorry.

I still have a sloppy mouth. I am still an ass, just trying to be less of one. That is my deep personal scar and I am so grateful for the leniancy in light of so much pain suffered by others on that day.

If you want to meet up with us – we are at the W hotel in Union Square for Thursday and Friday so give us a shout and we will try and set up a group drink.

Some good wishes go out to my friend Bill Cara who can’t make it out with us due to some surgery. Be well.

I am looking forward to meeting up with Eric – founder of my current favorite widget and networking tool MyBlogLog . If you are serious about blogging and Networking 2.0, you are hurting yourself by not joining up with the thousands of other MyBlogLogger’s (oy – a word I never thought would be uttered) who are exploring and building relationships that were not possible without this cool tool.

I also get to meet Erin Fetherman of The Blogging Times . I plan on singing for her and hope my MySpace page is ready for the meet and greet :) . I have some way cool made up answers to her softball questions. Nobody seems to get those right :) .

I plan on checking out a Chipotle’s store and see if they are as busy as the one’s here in Phoenix. If they are, I plan on buying the stock back here in the 50′s. I sold it in the low 60′s a few months back. Let me know if they are busy where you live.

Must visit the 5th Avenue Apple Store – I hear the “ark of the covenant” from the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie may be hidden under the store. I hate snakes so I hope not.

I have long used my blog as my portal page. It doesn’t link me to CNN or FOX or CNBC, but I don’t care.

I get my feel for what’s happening from the people in my blogroll. Some post early AM, some later in the day and some continually post.

Once I add a good music widget, www.howardlindzon.com will become my MySpace page. That has always been my issue with MySpace as it still seems closed in some way.

Fred sums it up best:

I look at my kids and their start pages aren’t Yahoo or Google News. Its their MySpace page. That’s where their world is. It’s no wonder that Google paid MySpace $900 million to be the search provider on MySpace.

That’s where all of this is going. We’ll program our online world and others will too. And we’ll start our day there instead of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. My best is many of you reading this are already there.

This is real smart for Michael as an extension of the brand. It is too long and he is not easy on the eyes, but he has a huge audience that will devour this stuff.

The bubble talk is so silly at this point with Google paying $900 million for MySpace search rights a few days ago.

That is bigger than the market cap of the complete Web 2.0 space (save the social networks).

Today’s monetization tool featured over at TechCrunch is FavoriteThingz . Pretty cool idea. There are tons of cool ideas like Goodstorm which I profiled yesterday.

All these tools are likely ahead of their time, but there will be a few big winners here and the stakes are huge. That is why this space is just heating up.

If you are thinking about starting a blog, or if you are a blogger, get used to reading The Blogging Times for all the news and links related to blogging and the blogosphere.

Someone needs to track all this new stuff. Might as well be us. Thanks Minic.

Other ideas are welcomed.

My favorite is Yelp.com which allows me to post my favorite places to eat and more. If only I had the time. Love the idea of it. It is slick. Check out my favorite restaurants in Phoenix by clicking on the Yelp Map down the right side of my blogroll.

CoComment is cool and when I finally get around to setting it up, it will help me track conversations I have entered around the blogosphere.

MyBlogLog was something I originally used for stats but is turning into a place where I can check in on Communities I like and interact with other bloggers.

I have also added a Yahoo Finance Widget so you can check stock quotes on my site.

1. Better popcorn
2. A Taser to zap talkers
3. Lower prices
4. Zitless staff that washes their hair (preferably not orange or streaky blue) and cuts their nails
5. More porn (never fails especially in HDTV)
6. BETTER F@#$CKING MOVIES.

By the way, I have left that message in thousands of suggestion boxes and even left the same note at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (pretty much whispered it into God’s ears). Nothing!

I love Cuban though he dissed me for playoff tickets. I like him asking his devoted readers for help. WHY NOT.

On the other hand, a week or so ago Cuban said the web is boring . Now has the gall to ask for help with movies. BUDDY – MOVIES ARE BORING.

Cuban knows the web is not boring and he is investing in all kinds of ventures to cash in on the future of the web. I see it as a challenge.

He means boring because he sees the copycat newbie internet entrepreneurs of today knock off successful ideas – get listed in Wikipedia and just truly bore us forever. It worries me too.

Now Cuban – pay me!

Knowing you won’t I have decided to start asking for my money back for every movie longer than 90 minutes and any movie that’s trailers are the best part. I suspect free movies forever. Too bad about the shitty popcorn.

Maybe the net is boring – but I like the price of admission and I make WICKED popcorn!

PS – If you like this article, please Digg IT or Reddit , BUT DO NOT POST IT ON KNOCKOFF NETSCAPE! :)