Like grandmother, like grandson.

Yesterday, I told my No. 1 son, Louie, that Twitter was down, after a denial-of-service attack.

He was–shall we say–not very sympathetic, as you will see in the video following the jump.

Interestingly, Louie’s response was similar to my mother’s, who mocked the microblogging service at a gas station on the way to my interview with its founders at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

As it turns out, though, data actually back them up.

(Plus, see their videos too.)

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BoomTown reported last week that Twitter was planning on debuting a new homepage this week.

And presto–it’s up!

The new page is heavy on search, as well as topic trends.

I am not sure this makes the site a “Google-killer,” as some have predicted, with Twitter dominating real-time search over Google.

But the blue is a very pretty shade, although I still want the microblogging service to 86 that annoying Twitter bird (alert PETA stat!).

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Twitter will unveil a new main homepage next week at Twitter.com, said co-founder Biz Stone, in order “to better show who we are.”

In an interview with BoomTown this afternoon, Stone said the current page is essentially confusing to the masses of people who come to it, made aware of the microblogging service by the massive media hype it has received over the last year.

People arriving at the new main homepage will be greeted by a search box, information on Twitter trends and a panoply of more specific information about how they can use Twitter.

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BoomTown always enjoys trying to come up with monetization ideas for Twitter, especially since the boys over at the hot San Francisco-based microblogging service seem so charmingly uninterested in it.

I have obviously inspired Dustin Diaz, a Twitter user interface engineer, who tweeted a very Juicy idea yesterday.

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Microsoft just announced in a blog post that it was “integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.”

Microsoft said it is not indexing all of Twitter in its new Bing search service–not yet, that is–nor has it made any kind of exclusive deal with Twitter to add this real-time feed.

The software giant is the first major search service to do this on a regular basis, using public APIs from Twitter–and it is an aggressive move, which seems to be part of its major push by Bing.

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In what is quite possibly the most spot-on comment about Twitter that BoomTown has heard thus far, Harvard University Professor Jonathan Zittrain said about its use by Iranians protesting the election results there:

“It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world. The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what make it so powerful.”

In other words, Twitter is so simplistic and silly that it is a perfect digital tool to overthrow a government–which kind of makes the trendy microblogging service the Forrest Gump of international relations.

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Even if it never makes any money, Twitter certainly does provide fabulous material for television spoofs.

So far, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have done several funny bits on Comedy Central, deftly mocking the microblogging service.

And now, Conan O’Brien is doubling down with two skits so far dubbed “Twitter TRACKER” on “The Tonight Show.”

In them, a loudmouthed voice delivers pointless celebrity tweets as a flock of blue cartoon Twitter birdies is murdered in various ingenious ways.

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As promised, we kick off posting the full sessions of the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with the interview that Walt Mossberg and I did onstage with two of the three founders of the hot microblogging service Twitter, Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

Our selection of the pair as the first interview was due to the enormous attention and, yes, hype, the San Francisco-based start-up has received of late. Along with a massive funding and a frothy valuation, Twitter has also attracted the acquisition attention of Web giants like Google and Microsoft.

And there is no question–thanks be to Oprah!–they’ve become the latest It boys of Silicon Valley.

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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, including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ringing in Bing and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz looking for the primo opportunity to curse at BoomTown.

Here are the online links to the transcripts, as well as video highlights.

We’ll be posting the full video of all the sessions on this site soon.

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We launch the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., today, after a long weekend of preparations and way too many meetings, as you can see in the video below.

(Including packing the mountain of swag bags for attendees, upon which one of my kids sits in this photo.)

The conference kicks off with an evening interview tonight with Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

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While getting ready for the spate of interviews at our seventh D: All Things Digital conference in just seven days, BoomTown has been doing a lot of research on the people taking the stage.

Some interviews will be quite serious (Eve Ensler, talking about the dire situation in the Congo) and some possibly funny (Mark Cuban, who simply defies definition).

But this picture that Twitter founder and CEO Evan Williams posted today on his Flickr page is easily the most unusual bit of research I have come across.

It is aptly titled, “This doesn’t seem awkward at all.”

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Well-known venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson will be at Google Wednesday to give a talk about “disruptive industries.”

The Googlers should be mighty interested, given that the object of their current annoyance and also desire, Twitter, is one of the hottest investments of late for Wilson’s Union Square Ventures.

Before Google execs try to hand over a big bag of money to Wilson to stop the microblogging madness, Wilson asked readers in a post to help him improve the talk.

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BoomTown likes to get together every year with well-known Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway for a chat about what’s up.

This year, he drilled down on something he is dubbing “persistent data,” which has all to do with Twitter, the hot microblogging service in which he is an investor.

Because of innovations like that, things seem to be looking up in the tech investing space, he said, and he is even predicting IPOs sooner than later.

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Yesterday, in a BoomTown post about the latest unproven rumors that the world’s most iconic computer company, Apple, was in “late-stage” negotiations to buy Silicon Valley’s latest pretty young thing, microblogging service Twitter, I wrote:

“Oh, the very notion of Apple and Twitter is a Techmeme dream-ticket, sure to be chewed over for days on end. (I once considered doing a post that just said “AppleTwitterAppleTwitterAppleTwitter…” for 1,000 words to see how much idiotic traffic I would get.)”

Well, I reconsidered.

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Was it more than a month ago that the Google was rumored to be in “late-stage negotiations to acquire Twitter”?

Not so much late-stage, I guess. So, I guess it should come as no surprise that it was time to fob yet another rumor that yet another moneybags of a company–this time, Apple–is in “late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter.”

But despite very serious interest in the hot microblogging service by every company that can afford considering such a thing, including Apple, getting across that late-stage line would require major investors in the hot start-up to be very involved, and they are not as yet.

So, rather than be on the edge of your seat about all these endless, alleged late-stage high jinks, here is a five-step list to cut out and keep when the questionable rumors of “late-stage negotiations” with Microsoft, News Corp., Verizon, Cisco and more inevitably show up.

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