All Things Digital

One of our favorite D: All Things Digital speakers, and now a regular attendee, has been Hollywood director, producer, writer and big-cowboy-hat-about-town, Barry Sonnenfeld (pictured here at D6).

So, BoomTown extends belated but Texas-sized congratulations to Sonnenfeld for winning an Emmy earlier this week for directing the pilot of “Pushing Daisies” on ABC.

A gadget freak, as well as an entertainment mogul, Sonnenfeld was very entertaining and insightful about Hollywood’s uncomfortable relationship with technology in his interview with Walt Mossberg in 2006 at D4 (and which you can find here in photos and video).

Backstage at the Emmy Award show, which annually fetes the television industry, Sonnenfeld–who always tries to get Walt and me to ask outrageous questions of speakers at the conference in exchange for walk-ons on his shows and movies (so far, we have not bitten, although he has gotten off some good ones as an audience member in the Q&A part of the interviews)–gave a typically saucy interview to the press about his win.

And, no surprise, Sonnenfeld did manage to deliver one perfect geeky quip, as the music cue started to cut off his speech on Sunday night, which I doubt the glam crowd there got, but was not lost on me:

“Love TV and fear the Internet.”

Recently, while I was at a conference in Los Angeles, I caught up with Veoh Founder Dmitry Shapiro.

BoomTown will be focusing a lot on online video this year and Veoh is one of the several online video-sharing sites–a group of smaller players that includes sites like Joost, Hulu, Dailymotion, Vimeo and others that I like to call not-YouTube.

But there are pluses to not being the Google-owned (GOOG) video behemoth, in that major entertainment companies who want to figure out how to put their content online aren’t wondering all day long whether to hug or sue you (or both if you are Sumner Redstone).

Today, for example, the Los Angeles-based Veoh announced that the ABC (DIS) television network would put full episodes of its hot prime-time shows–such as “Ugly Betty” (love it) and “Desperate Housewives” (not so much)–up on the site on a non-exclusive basis.

While Veoh has a lot of short, user-generated material, it has also made a push to get more professional material from big media companies like CBS (CBS)–which wins kudos for being the most promiscuous of networks–on its service.

Interestingly in this deal, media connections seem at play here: Disney-owned ABC is giving over content to Veoh, which has former Disney poobah Michael Eisner as one of its principal investors.

The traffic-type deal is typical–Veoh gets paid to send audience to ABC’s site or gets it to use ABC’s really nice player, and ABC tries to monetize it. Veoh currently says it has 28 million unique monthly visitors.

Of course, Veoh is also trying to figure out that nettlesome monetization issue that all online video sites face, which centers on building audience with the attractive big media content and then getting them to watch other ad-supported fare on its site.

But, as with all video sites, it is still in the early stages and, thus, Veoh got another tidy pile of new funding just two weeks ago to help it muddle through.

That would be $30 million more to add to the kitty of about $40 million previously raised.

Along with existing investors–Shelter Capital Partners, Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs (GS), Eisner’s Tornante Company, Tom Freston’s Firefly3, Time Warner (TWX) Investments and Jonathan Dolgen–Veoh’s latest round included Intel Capital, Adobe Systems (ADBE) and also media and tech investor Gordon Crawford.

I talked to Shapiro, who now serves as Veoh’s chief innovation officer, about the money and more here:

Here’s the promo video for the latest project from Amanda Congdon, the former once-rocketing host of Rocketboom and later a video blogger for ABC (she is pictured below at that job).

This time, it’s a video show called, “Sometimesdaily with Amanda Congdon,” which is in beta now.

Sometimes daily, Amanda? Hey, try sometimes all night, here at BoomTown! (Congdon obviously gets rest, as she looks good in the new show, unlike sleep-deprived me.)

This promo video here is decidedly odd in that hip way creaky folks like me don’t always get, but it is also certainly watchable.

Here’s the video:

Introducing Sometimesdaily from Sometimesdaily on Vimeo.

We got such a great reaction from our Obama Girl/Obamapology online videos that we posted yesterday, BoomTown has decided to reinstate our practice of showcasing excellent online videos that we started posting during the writers’ strike.

Our premise has been simple: That online video in both short and long form is the future and its development is important to pay attention to.

So here’s two slightly vulgar but still compelling examples of comedy–a particularly promising arena online–both of which first appeared on ABC’s late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

The first by comedian Sarah Silverman, which aired on Jan. 31, is a satire about her supposed carnal relations with actor Matt Damon. It has been viewed online over eight million times–grabbing a much larger audience than it did offline.

The second, a video rejoinder by Kimmel (who is Silverman’s boyfriend too), is now up to two million views since it was released Sunday night after the Oscars. His love interest? Why, Damon crony Ben Affleck, of course.

Kimmel’s is the better of the two and jam-packed with celebrities (Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt!).

Both, which are posted below, have quite a bit of profanity with lots of pixelation and bleeping, although that has not stopped ABC, which is owned by Disney (DIS), from putting the video front and center on its home page.

But be forewarned, although these are exactly the kind of videos that go viral online–funny, quick and hip–some might find them offensive.

Sarah Silverman/Matt Damon

Jimmy Kimmel/Ben Affleck

I knew my incessant interviewing of geeky guys would get me somewhere someday.

BoomTown got a nice shout-out from ABC News’ video blogger Amanda Congdon a couple of weeks ago (I know, a little late, but we just caught up on our obsessive self-searching on the Web) about an interesting video interview I did with BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis about the state of media in the digital age.

For that, Jarvis and BoomTown got the unusual designation in this recent Congdon report’s “My Fair Lady” segment. While we prefer the musical stylings of, say, Stephen Sondheim, we’ll take the Audrey Hepburn comparison, however unlikely.

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