At the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, besides interviewing a lot of tech and media muckety-mucks, the All Things Digital staff and friends also got a terrific screening of a new documentary–“Autumn Gem”–by our Webmaster, Adam Tow, and his wife, Rae Chang.

The pair co-produced the project, which explores the extraordinary life of the Chinese revolutionary heroine and women’s rights activist, Qiu Jin.

Even more interesting is what it is like to get an indie film made and distributed in the digital age, which I talked about with Tow and Chang last week.

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San Francisco-based Sugar Media, which specializes in Web sites aimed at women, cut its ties with NBC Universal by buying back its shares and got a Series C funding of $16 million from Sequoia Capitol.

Sequoia has been an existing venture investor, having put $5 million into the start-up in late 2006. NBC, a unit of GE, invested $10 million in 2007.

Sugar, which runs the flagship PopSugar.com site, also announced it has bought video shopping start-up, Shopflick, and had hired its founder and CEO to run a new Los Angeles-based entertainment unit.

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Big, giant and prolonged sigh–as well as a cranky-old-lady shake of the fist–to our distant cousins over at the Fox television network who dinged BoomTown’s favorite sci-fi show, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” today.

I am officially in a Summer Glau funk, with major gadget withdrawal.

Loosely based on the movie franchise, the show garnered a passionate fan base online and off, but not enough to merit being renewed. It’s ironic since the latest film in the cyborg-versus-man epic, “Terminator Salvation,” will open this Thursday.

But one of the TV show’s stars is fighting back online. All hail the Resistance!

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According to several sources, News Corp. will officially announce its shaken-but-not-stirred digital lineup this morning, as former AOL head Jon Miller takes over as the media giant’s new chief digital officer.

And Peter Levinsohn–his predecessor at Fox Interactive Media, which Miller will inherit in a new form, along with a larger portfolio, all based in New York–will also officially take up his new post as the key digital exec at News Corp.’s film and television studios in California.

BoomTown and others had reported on the changes last week.

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BoomTown has confirmed a report that former AOL head Jon Miller is set to take over as digital head at News Corp., replacing Peter Levinsohn.

But Miller has not actually signed up for the job officially, since he is still under a noncompete agreement with Time Warner from his AOL stint. It runs out in three days, in fact.

But sources said News Corp. is likely to announce Miller as its “chief digital officer” by Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

Once he does sign, which seems likely, Miller will be reporting directly to the media giant’s head, Rupert Murdoch. Based in New York, he will also be chairman and CEO of the newly created News Digital Media group.

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Here’s a longish video BoomTown did over the weekend at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

I was there to moderate a panel on Saturday titled, “Where Do We Go From Here? Icons of the Digital Age,” with YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings.

I did interviews with each of them here, as well as a chat with my only indie celebrity friend, Jane Lynch, some scenes from the festival and an intro and outro from my own little stars, Louie and Alex Swisher.

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BoomTown is headed to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival today, an annual journey I make to moderate panels about the tech industry. The festival officially opened yesterday in Park City, Utah. While still largely a confab of independent filmmakers, Hollywood deal types and various celebrities rifling though swag orgies, a lot of geeks are there too.

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How much is AOL really worth?

Well, its own owner, Time Warner, has been trying to put a big, shiny $10 billion price tag on the much-beleaguered online unit for months now, as it dribbles out tiny leaks about its hot-and-cold-running acquisition talks with both Yahoo and Microsoft.

But after yesterday’s less-than-impressive results for AOL, which dragged down the crowing Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes could deservedly do over its “Dark Knight” and “Sex and the City” film successes, can it even hope to get that much?

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Here’s what a top-notch source at Yahoo joked to me tonight, after Microsoft walked away from its unsolicited takeover bid to acquire the long-troubled Internet giant.

“Google is now officially our best friend.”

Oh no.

Instantly, an image popped into my brain–that of the slithery Kaa singing “Trust in Me (The Python Song)” to Mowgli from the Disney classic animated film, “The Jungle Book.”

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While at the Sundance Film Festival, I took a little tour of Park City, Utah, visiting with Chris DeWolfe and Dani Dudeck of MySpace and Sundance’s digital guru Ian Calderon and trudging up Main Street with my celebrity tour guide, Jane Lynch (who is about as hysterical as you get in “Best in Show” and [...]

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Here’s a video I did on the panel I moderated focused on online video at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, called “Webolution!–Hollywood Adapts to the Web.”
Tech is getting a lot of attention in Hollywood, so talking about online video is a key area for the independent filmmakers who are here this year.
Topics on [...]

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I just got to Park City, Utah, for my annual visit (well, this will be my third year here) to the famous film festival that takes place in this lovely mountain resort.
While I like a good movie as much as the next person, I am no film aficionado, nor do I have a screenplay stuffed [...]

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So I took a trip up to Rochester, N.Y., over the summer to visit Kodak, the once powerful film giant, which has been struggling in recent years to make the difficult transition from film to digital.
I made a few videos there and then neglected to post them in the rush of other breaking news.
But [...]

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