For many years now, one of our regular attendees at the D: All Things Digital conference has been award-winning movie and television director, producer and writer Barry Sonnenfeld, who is–as it turns out–a not-so-closeted geek in his spare time with a gadget column for Esquire magazine called “The Digital Man.”

Now he is branching out to a vlog about his geek passions on Crackle, which will appear every two weeks from wherever he is–either from his homes in East Hampton, N.Y. or Telluride, Colo., or from Hollywood sets.

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BoomTown is wearing all-black today, in profound mourning for the prospect of no Paula Abdul on “American Idol” next season.

“With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return,” tweeted Abdul yesterday, bidding goodbye, natch, on Twitter.

Here is a cool video look at her and co-judge Simon Cowell and one of her appearance at the D: All Things Digital conference. (I kid you not!)

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The search for the perfect remote control continues, this time from Canesta, a San Jose-based company specializing in 3-D “natural interfaces.”

That means controlling your television via a series of gestures–including a wave and more.

Canesta demoed the new technology to control TV functions, from changing channels to navigating more complex menus, at the seventh D: All Things Digital.

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Susan Boyle’s sensational television singing performance jumped from that medium to become a viral Internet hit, fueling more television that is, of course, headed to the Internet again.

Who says old and new media can’t work together?

The YouTube official version of the original TV performance is now at 15.6 million views.

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While in London recently, BoomTown got the chance to do an onstage interview with Tony Cohen of FremantleMedia, the under-the-radar media company that is one of the most successful international producers of mostly televised entertainment.

You might have heard of one of its brands: The “Idol” juggernaut and all its spinoffs, including “American Idol.” Yes, the man we can finally all blame for Ryan Seacrest!

In any case, Cohen and I had a lovely chat about the future of television in the digital age.

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Is it just me or does it feel like the whole odd public back-and-forth between Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is beginning to mimic the endless loop of the deeply annoying relationship between Ross Geller and Rachel Green on the long-running NBC television hit, “Friends”?

At least in their star-crossed hijinks, Ross and Rachel smooched from time to time in between the juvenile bickering and push-me-pull-you antics.

But with Yang and Ballmer, it has been only juvenile bickering and push-me-pull-you antics 24/7, which is why BoomTown wishes they would just get a room.

A conference room to negotiate in, of course! (Get your minds out of the gutter!)

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I am back in Sin City to appear on a panel at the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) conference here today, along with former Walt Disney head Michael Eisner, former Viacom head Jonathan Dolgen and Dmitry Shapiro, founder and CIO of Veoh.
Titled “Possibilities and Perils of Internet TV,” it should be an interesting [...]

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