Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal did a special Technology Report section, made up of excerpts of selected interviews from the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

It includes sessions with Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer ringing in Bing; Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz trying to find a reason to curse at BoomTown; Roger McNamee and Jon Rubenstein of Palm (PALM) introing the Pre; Twitter Co-Founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams saying “we do not know” was the microblogging service’s mantra; entrepreneur Mark Cuban talking smack about the Internet; cable legend and Liberty Media (LMDIA) Chairman John Malone cracking wise; and NBC Universal (GE) head Jeff Zucker doing the Hulu.

As the event’s hosts and interviewers, Walt Mossberg and I also did a mini-essay about the event, in which we continued to jest about various goofy names that digital eras had been given.

As we wrote:

“Before the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week in Carlsbad, Calif., we declared—with our tongues firmly planted in our cheeks—that Web 2.0 was over and Web 3.0 had begun.

While we were poking fun at Silicon Valley’s incessant need to stick a hyped-up catchphrase on each and every development, the use of such jargon was actually important, because we think that the digital sector is now moving full bore into an entirely new cycle of profound change.”

We decided to focus in on smart phones and the mobile platform as critically important in the next era, although what we were talking about was the complete integration of computing into every part of our lives in a way that is seamless, ubiquitous and, ideally, dead simple.

As we also noted in the essay:

“From using easy gestures to grab any piece of information from the Web to having powerful computers in the palm of your hand to being able to quickly dip into complex social networks to getting real-time information from across the globe as it happens, this is an era when computing could become as integrated and invisible as electricity and just as important.”

So read all about online and in print (if you saved a copy) and you can also watch video highlights on this site too.

But, best of all, All Things Digital be posting the full video of all the sessions on this site soon.

Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

It’s been a real winning streak since then for D, due in large part to our great speakers–such as Microsoft (MSFT) icon Bill Gates and Apple (AAPL) legend Steve Jobs.

Both have been onstage many times over the years, including a historic interview the pair of tech titans did together in 2007 at D5.

Other amazing speakers have included: Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE), Barry Diller of InterActiveCorp (IACI), legendary director George Lucas, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (AMZN), former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft head Steve Ballmer, Walt Disney (DIS) honcho Bob Iger, Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard (ATVI), CBS (CBS) CEO Les Moonves, Democratic and Republican pols like former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John McCain, all the leadership of Google (GOOG) and many, many more.

We have had a lot of great moments onstage with all these tech and media players over the years, to be sure, with interviews ranging from the funny to the sublime to the truly disastrous.

But, like the digital industry and the innovation our conference focuses on, we also like to lean forward to try to figure out what the Next Big Thing is around the corner, whether it comes from Silicon Valley or not.

That’s why we’re kicking off our conference on May 26 with two of the founders of Twitter–Biz Stone and Evan Williams–who are riding high on tech’s latest hot thing, which might turn out to be either a rocket ship or a shooting star.

They’ll be followed up over the next two days by a plethora of interesting players, from the leaders of several major mobile companies to content execs hit hard by fast-moving digital forces to a new Internet leader like Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz, who is trying to turn around one of the Web’s great icons from its more recent lackluster path.

And, as we always do, we will be featuring a spate of demos too, trying to see if we can unearth that next next thing.

In the past, the D stage has seen the debut of start-up products like Sling Media’s Slingbox, Aliph’s Jawbone and Pure Digital’s Flip, all of which have gone onto glory. And also some, like Palm’s Foleo, which did not.

While not everyone can attend D, our crack staff is committed to bringing all the action from this year’s conference to readers of the All Things Digital site via up-to-the-minute blogs, photos, videos, tweets, digs and more. We’ll also, as soon as we can, post the videos of each of the onstage sessions, in their entirety.

Until it all kicks off, here is the list of speakers, below, in alphabetical order, who will be appearing at 2009’s D7 conference:

Irving Azoff | CEO of Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM)

Mitchell Baker | Chairman of Mozilla

Steve Ballmer | CEO of Microsoft

Carol Bartz | CEO of Yahoo

Mark Cuban | Chairman of HDNet and Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures

Eve Ensler | Playwright and Founder of V-Day

Arianna Huffington | Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo | CEO of Nokia (NOK)

Mike Lazaridis | Co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIMM)

John Lilly | CEO of Mozilla

John Malone | Chairman of Liberty Media Corporation (LCAPA)

Roger McNamee | Partner, Elevation Partners

Jon Miller | Chief Digital Officer of News Corp.

Jon Rubinstein | Executive Chairman, Palm (PALM)

Randall Stephenson | CEO of AT&T (T)

Biz Stone | Co-founder of Twitter

Owen Van Natta | CEO of MySpace

Katharine Weymouth | Publisher of the Washington Post (WPO)

Evan Williams | Co-founder and CEO of Twitter

Jeff Zucker | CEO of NBC Universal (GE)

One of the more interesting quarterly earnings calls to watch carefully is going to be Time Warner’s in two weeks.

Why? Well, in the digital space, it’s because of its long-suffering online unit AOL and what results it will show.

More importantly, though, is what AOL’s performance will mean for the attempts Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has tirelessly been making to trade it away.

The media giant will announce its third-quarter results Nov. 5 at 10:30 a.m., Eastern time.

Last quarter’s results were not too promising, to say the least, and it was due in large part because AOL dragged Time Warner (TWX) down badly.

There were declines in both revenue and operating income at AOL, which were luckily offset by strength in Time Warner’s cable television and movie studio divisions.

AOL saw its revenue drop to $1.1 billion, a 16 percent dip, with operating income off 36 percent, to $230 million. There were more subscribers lost from its slowly dying dial-up Internet service–incredibly AOL has lost 14 million in the last three years.

And that was planned, after AOL’s home page and email went free. What was not so figured out was how badly its business would be struggling to make a better margins from advertising, even as its access business dwindled.

Time Warner began to separate the two sides of AOL, an effort still in process, in order to sell them both off.

John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) said this summer that he would make a swap for the cash-generating access business, and there is also Earthlink (ELNK) and United Online (UNTD) in that mix.

As to the rest of the AOL business–still an advertising and content behemoth, despite its woeful descent over the years in Time Warner’s care–Bewkes has been trying to pawn it off for years now in a variety of deal-chatting with companies like News Corp. (NWS) and Microsoft (MSFT). (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and this Web site.)

And, principally these days, Yahoo, with which Time Warner has been locked in endless discussions about a possible merger for months.

But, while every week the AOL side leaks the breathless news that the union is just about to be struck, that has yet to come to pass.

Still, even this past week, various execs from both companies have been meeting, discussing what the new Yahoo-AOL combo might look like.

The deal, on some level, makes sense, putting together the top graphical ad businesses online and uniting powerful content assets, as well as dominant online communications offerings.

The pair also share a strong relationship with search powerhouse Google (GOOG)–it owns five percent of AOL and does its search, and is trying to launch a controversial search ad outsourcing deal with Yahoo.

But a possible merger of AOL and Yahoo also has a strong stink of desperation about it–of two struggling companies trying to stand together so they won’t fall apart.

Of the pair, despite its weak results last week and endless turmoil over the last year, Yahoo (YHOO) is decidedly the stronger business, with obvious prospects of revival.

But its moribund stock, now hovering in the $12 a share range, has put a damper on talks, given how much Yahoo would have to give up to get AOL.

For its part, Time Warner is foolishly holding onto an $8 to $10 billion price tag from days long gone by. And if results at AOL continue on the trajectory they are on–how could they not, given the weak economic situation?–Bewkes might want to get a little more flexible.

Because things are only going to get worse. So, if a Yahoo-AOL deal is to be struck, sooner or later, for Time Warner, it had better be sooner.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I will post this week.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC (IACI) just six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

In this second part, Diller talks about the dire digital crossroads in Hollywood, the prospects for the Ask.com search service, his take on the Yahoo-Microsoft takeover battle (no one is a winner here), Google’s dominance, Facebook’s hype (Diller calls the hot social-networking site the “princess phone” of this era) and the power of interactivity.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with Barry Diller, the always clever chairman and CEO of IAC, the Internet conglomerate whose holdings include Ask.com, Match.com and many others.

The video of the interview is in three parts, all of which I will post this week.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA) over the last year, Diller finally broke apart IAC (IACI) just six weeks ago. His reason: The company had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

In this first part, Diller talks about the details of his court fight with Malone, why he wanted to break up IAC and what it is going to become all carved up, how he is getting back to content creation and also trying out other new online products and how Hollywood is “so inbred, it’s a wonder that the children have any teeth.”

Like I said, always clever.

Don’t miss this very good interview–does he ever give a bad one?–that IAC’s Barry Diller did with The Wall Street Journal’s Shira Ovide in today’s edition.

After a bruising court battle with shareholder and cable mogul John Malone of Liberty Media (LINTA), Diller finally broke apart the Internet conglomerate six weeks ago. His reason: IAC (IACI) had become too complex and its stock had suffered due to the operating confusion.

Here are BoomTown’s three favorite Diller killer quotes from The Journal interview …

On the breakup:

“I don’t have answers for anybody else. What I know is that internal complexity makes for superficiality. There’s never essentially a pure story unless there’s a pure product line that has its own shining clarity.”

On Internet advertising:

“You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising. Social-networking advertising is being discounted because there is so much inventory [of available ad spots], and because methods have not yet been found to make it very effective. Will that get figured out? I absolutely believe it will. What form will it take? Absolutely unknown.”

On his fight with Malone:

“It is water down the drain. It’s unfortunate that executives of Liberty forced us into this process that resulted in the court affirming our position, but they did. It was hurtful to the company in which they’re investors, it was hurtful to me, it was a waste of time and money. It’s over. It certainly has no effect because my relations with John Malone are right and proper. They can have board members, but I outvote them.”

And, if you want more Diller unplugged, about all of the above and more, here is the highlight reel from my interview with him in May at the sixth D: All Things Digital conference.

Don’t miss his take on Hollywood children’s teeth.

The entire interview will go up next week in this blog, but here is the shorter video for now:

Gifts.com President & CEO William Lynch, who founded the site for IAC (IACI), will transition to HSN full-time as its EVP of marketing and content. He had previously been managing the HSN.com site, while also running Gifts.com.

The site, which also offers gift cards that can be redeemed at over 100 merchants, is now a 40-person operation.

Rapp has been with IAC since 2006 and, prior to joining the company, worked at the New York Times Company.

After a contentious battle with large shareholder Liberty Media, IAC is in the midst of separating itself into five publicly traded companies, expected to be completed in the third quarter, spinning off HSN, Ticketmaster, Interval International and LendingTree.

Left in the new IAC will be: Ask.com, Bloglines, Citysearch, CursorMania, Evite, Excite, IAC Advertising Solutions, InsiderPages, iWon, My Fun Cards, My Way, Popular Screensavers, Smiley Central, Vimeo, Webfetti and Zwinky, Match.com, ServiceMagic, Shoebuy.com, Entertainment Publications, ReserveAmerica; Pronto, Gifts.com, Green.com, Primal Ventures, InstantAction, BustedTees, CollegeHumor, GarageGames, RushmoreDrive.com, Very Short List, and 23/6.

Also included will IAC’s current investments in Active.com, Brightcove, FiLife, MerchantCircle, OpenTable, Points.com and SHOP Channel.

“I am beginning to think these people are insane. … Everything they cite is hogwash.”

That’s what is known as a classic Barry Diller, who can be relied on to come out with a good one when provoked.

In this case, the provocateur is Liberty Media’s John Malone (pictured on the right in this comic with Diller), whose company has headed to court to try to remove Diller from his job as chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp.

As chronicled by the always deft Jessica Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal today, the fight between the longtime partners is getting uglier still with–oh, let’s just admit it–totally confusing moves and countermoves about the fate of IAC and its subsidiaries.

Liberty has a giant stake in all of these entities and Diller, of course, has control of that stake. A recipe for mogul mud wrestling, if ever there was one.

But the fight is a serious one for a number of high-profile Web companies within IAC, which was being restructured to stop just this kind of fighting between Diller and Malone.

Just how Diller has gone about rejiggering it all, in complicated spin-offs in a way that allegedly undercuts Liberty’s control yet again, is what set the new round of tensions off.

Those sites embroiled in the fighting include: Expedia, TicketMaster, LendingTree and Ask.

As luck would have it, Diller will be interviewed onstage at the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital in late May, so there will be plenty to talk about!

The last time I interviewed him at the Monaco Media Forum last November, Diller let loose too, when he memorably scoffed at the $15 billion valuation for Facebook and Microsoft’s $240 million investment in the hot social network.

“If it was real money, it would be insane, but since it isn’t really, then why bother [worrying about it],” said Diller. “It doesn’t mean anything, it is a phantom, false valuation. Let them sell for $14 billion, $998 million, and then I’ll believe them.”

Here is a sampling of quotes from my one-on-one interview with him onstage at the Monaco Media Forum on Friday morning, taken from the not-so-audible audio of my Flip video camera. But you’ll get the idea of why Diller (pictured here) remains one of the more robust characters out there.

We began talking about the split of IAC into five parts, lopping off unrelated businesses, with the backdrop of a struggle he has been engaged in with Liberty Media’s John Malone.

Why do it? “We were being superficial managers,” said Diller. For example, of the mortgage business around LendingTree, he said: “I have little to no interest and that is not how I want to live my life.”

(Very few execs, I can assure you, will admit to rank corporate boredom about their businesses.)

But Diller was just getting started, taking shots at everything from the “dumb” Hollywood writers’ strike to the insanity of Facebook’s $15 billion valuation, as well as his own corporate shortcomings.

About the idea of synergy among his many properties, which he once touted effusively: “I still believe in synergy, but I call it natural law. They have to naturally fit into each other. The problem is that there was so much huffing and puffing to fit them together.”

(Again, it’s nice to hear someone admit when things just don’t work.)

Diller also took aim at Google, within a week of signing a big guaranteed ad deal with it for IAC’s Ask search network. “It has huge market share, and I don’t believe in the long run it will be able to keep up with it,” he said.

(In this, he is dead right, and the lack of search innovation at Google is troubling.)

While letting Yahoo off the hook for its management woes, Diller did marvel at Microsoft’s inability to compete in the online business. “Microsoft is a greater failure really, if you think about it, with a huge amount of capital and no real traction,” he said.

Diller also noted that the writers’ strike in Hollywood was silly, noting that the writers were striking over virtually nothing. “No one can solve an issue where there is no economic model yet,” he said. “Over the next five years, the market will develop, and at the end of that period, if the economic value is being created, [the studios] will sit in good faith and give [the writers] the money.”

(I am not so sure the writers should trust a bunch of execs who have shafted them so many times when it relates to technology, although Diller is correct that there are no real revenues to speak of yet.)

Lastly, he scoffed at the recent $15 billion valuation for Facebook and Microsoft’s $240 million investment in the hot social network, noting it was simply a move to thwart Google by the software giant.

“If it was real money, it would be insane, but since it isn’t really, then why bother [worrying about it],” said Diller. “It doesn’t mean anything, it is a phantom, false valuation. Let them sell for $14 billion, $998 million, and then I’ll believe them.”

Me too.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Much, much, much.

Yesterday, the battle between InterActiveCorp’s Barry Diller and John Malone of Liberty Media (pictured here in cartoon form) got much more interesting.

As luck would have it, I will be interviewing Diller onstage at the Monaco Media Forum in Monte-Carlo this week–yes, it’s as glamorous as it sounds–so now there will be lots more to talk to him about at the digital gathering.

Diller is an excellent interview–he’s appeared at two D conferences–as he likes to parry more than the average CEO and he is good at it.

Very good, as it turns out, when dealing with Malone.

By way of background, Liberty has indicated it wants to rid itself of the 24% of IAC it owns. That stake has 58% super-voting rights, but it’s controlled by Diller via a past agreement.

So, Malone has been applying public pressure, leveling some choice barbs at Diller.

In a previous piece in The Wall Street Journal, Malone came out with this gem: “There was a time when there was, I think, a 20% Barry premium. Today you could argue there is a Barry discount.”

To deal with the pressure, Diller made the move to carve up the $9 billion holding company, made up of a variety of Internet properties, chopping and dicing more than a Ginsu knive demonstrator selling his heart out on his HSN cable-shopping network (see IAC revenue chart below).

It’s a major reversal for Diller, who has spent many years assembling IAC and who even talked about the importance of its synergies. Now, under his proposal, it will be split into five parts, all separately traded, essentially separating the wheat from the chaff.

Faster-growing and more prominent Web outfits Ask.com, Citysearch and Match.com will remain in IAC. HSN, Ticketmaster, Interval International and LendingTree would become separate, much as Diller’s travel sites became in a previous deal in 2005.

And under terms of Liberty’s proxy agreement with Diller, Liberty could get its stock power back in the spun companies–the ones Diller does not care about as much.

Even Malone was warily pleased. “It unsticks some things,” he said in another article yesterday in The Wall Street Journal.

Well, at least it’s a both tastily complex horse-trading scheme, typical of Diller, but also has a simplicity to it.

Still, Diller faces some basic Internet issues as he seeks a slimmer future.

For example, Ask, which just re-signed its guaranteed ad deal with Google, is innovative in its search results approach in a way Yahoo should be (we’ll forgive the company its misguided Kato Kaelin ad campaign).

But it is still a small player, with 5% of the U.S. market (although a network of sites it has gives it a bit more clout), which limits its scope and power.

In other words, small may be beautiful, but it’s still small.

Don’t miss this most excellent article by Jessica E. Vascellaro in The Wall Street Journal this past weekend about the mogul-tussle–an Olympic sport!–between IAC/InterActiveCorp.’s Barry Diller and John Malone of Liberty Media (both pictured here).

It’s called: “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” And what are they fighting over? Control, of course, and big piles of money related to IAC (see revenue chart below)!

It’s always nice when two extravagantly colorful business icons take off the gloves so extravagantly in public and don’t shrink from controversy.

In the piece, the normally quippy Diller comes off almost calm, though, compared to the particularly obstreperous Malone, who is clearly trying to spur Diller into doing something rash by ranting in public.

My advice: Keep a lid on it, Barry!

In any case, some choice quotes from Malone:

“There was a time when there was, I think, a 20% Barry premium. Today you could argue there is a Barry discount.”

“The hook is set. It is our company. Barry ain’t going to be able to spit the hook.”

“Barry doesn’t use his balance sheet effectively. He is not a financial guy.”

“There is not quite as much love for Barry on average [at Liberty]. [Liberty CEO] Greg [Maffei] has made it clear that he isn’t as enchanted with Barry as I am.”

“It is a little uncomfortable for Barry. Right now we are the shadow that walks around behind him.”