Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

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SUBJECT: ATHLETES (90%); SPORTS AGENTS & PROMOTERS (90%); OLYMPICS (90%); SPORTS (89%); SPORTS & RECREATION (89%); SPONSORSHIP (78%); SPORTS AWARDS (77%); SUMMER OLYMPICS (77%); WOMEN (69%); PRODUCT ENDORSEMENTS (63%)
COMPANY: COCA-COLA CO (55%)
TICKER: KO (NYSE) (55%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS312111 SOFT DRINK MANUFACTURING (55%); SIC2086 BOTTLED & CANNED SOFT DRINKS & CARBONATED WATER (55%)
PERSON: TIGER WOODS (50%); VENUS WILLIAMS (50%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (57%)
GEOGRAPHIC: RALEIGH, NC, USA (79%); NEW YORK, NY, USA (56%) NEW YORK, USA (79%); NORTH CAROLINA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (91%)
LOAD-DATE: August 3, 2008
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: NASTASIA, UNLIMITED: Liukin's image sells everything from blue jeans to at-home balance beams. (pg.MM62)

BEAUTY AND THE BROKER: Morgenstein and client at the Liukin's gym in Texas. (pg.MM65)

DUELING SWEETHEARTS: Johnson (on bar) and Liukin are both teammates and rivals. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY FINLAY MacKAY)
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Late Edition - Final

Hail to The Twitterer
BYLINE: By MARK LEIBOVICH
SECTION: Section WK; Column 0; Week in Review Desk; THE NATION; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1243 words
DATELINE: Washington
-- Big surprise: a lot of smarty-pants computer types have been snickering at John McCain lately.

The self-described ''Neanderthal'' of the Grand Old Party (emphasis, old) has been catching flack for admitting that he is no techno-geek. He not only did not invent the Internet, he can barely use it.

''I don't expect to set up my own blog,'' he told the New York Times reporters Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper. The Times has learned that Mr. McCain does not text, Treo or Twitter, either.

How would he possibly spend his time in the White House?

We joke, but the serious question -- and one that has occupied many of the blogs and discussion groups that Mr. McCain does not partake of -- is whether the computing habits of the presumptive Republican nominee should have any bearing at all on his fitness to be commander in chief.

While 73 percent of American adults use the Internet (only 35 percent 65 or older), according to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, it's likely that many of them would rather have a president who can get Osama bin Laden than get online. And there is a common belief that says being president should be more a ''vision'' job than a ''management'' job, and that the clutter of a digital life can only distract from the Big Picture and Deep Thoughts a leader should be concerned with. In other words, would we really want a president ''friending'' from the Oval Office, scouring Wikipedia for information on Iran's nuclear program or fielding e-mail from someone claiming to be ''Nigerian general'' seeking an American bank account for embezzled millions?

As a practical matter, probably not. Presidents can avoid using computers if they want to. That's one of the privileges of the office. They are surrounded by a staff entrusted with keeping them plugged in, day and night.

So why have Mr. McCain's admissions of digital illiteracy sparked such ridicule in wiseguy circles?

Computers have become something of a cultural marker -- in politics and in the real world. Proficiency with them suggests a basic familiarity with the day-to-day experience of most Americans -- just as ignorance to them can suggest someone is ''out of touch,'' or ''old.''

''We're not asking for a president to answer his own e-mail,'' said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley futurist who teaches at Stanford. ''We're asking for a president who understands the context of what e-mail means.''

The ''user experience,'' Mr. Saffo said, brings with it an implicit understanding of how the country lives, and where it might be heading. As Mr. McCain would lack this, he would also be deficient in this broader appreciation for how technology affects lives.

There will always be people who take great delight in the powerful betraying cluelessness over technology. When Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, was indicted last week on charges of filing false financial disclosures, the news was met with reminders that he once referred to the Internet as a ''series of tubes.'' Some mocked President Bush, too, when he referred to his using ''the Google'' and ''the Internets.'' Mr. Bush used to e-mail but gave it up when he became president because of concerns about security and a paper trail -- the same things, presumably, a successor would consider.

In the rarefied context of the Oval Office, however, there can be great value in having a president who has an intuitive sense of how a technology works, said Tom Wheeler, a telecommunications entrepreneur and investor who wrote the recent book ''Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of how Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.''

''I don't think it's so much a question of what a president is doing today,'' Mr. Wheeler said. ''It's a question of how responsive are you to the fact that there will be continuing technological change during your term.''

Mr. Wheeler, a supporter and fundraiser for Mr. McCain's Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, said that Lincoln was the model of a president who embraced technology. Lincoln's mastery of the telegraph machine not only put him well ahead of most of his constituents on the technology curve but also allowed him to speak directly to his generals and track their actions.

Lincoln gave a speech in 1860 that said the United States' responsiveness to new technology was the chief virtue separating it from Europe. The speech begins, ''All creation is a mine, and every man a miner.''

It's no surprise that Mr. McCain -- standard-bearer of the party of Lincoln -- has moved to press delete on the notion that he is a Luddite.

''I do understand the importance of the computer,'' Mr. McCain reassured in The San Francisco Chronicle last week. ''I understand the importance of the blogs.'' He said, ''I am forcing myself -- let me put it this way, I am using the computer more and more every day.'' But keeping up with technology ''doesn't mean that I have to e-mail people,'' he said. ''Now, I read e-mails.'' The staff is ''constantly showing them to me as the news breaks during the day.''

This was a decidedly different Mr. McCain from the one who said in South Carolina last year that it was important for leaders to communicate with bloggers, ''as painful as that might be.''

Or the Mr. McCain who in an interview with Fortune magazine two years ago called himself a ''Neanderthal'' about computers, in contrast to his wife, Cindy, whom he called a ''wizard.''

''She even does my boarding passes -- people can do that now,'' Mr. McCain marveled. ''When we go to the movies, she gets the tickets ahead of time. It's incredible.''

Mr. McCain's sense of wonder evoked the episode in the early 1990s when George H. W. Bush became overly impressed upon seeing a price scanner at a supermarket check-out counter. It suggested to some people that the president, who had spent four years in the White House after spending eight years as vice president, was out of touch with the lives of average Americans.

The McCain campaign is sensitive to the notion that his limited knowledge of computing could be taken as a signal that he is blind to technology.

''You don't actually have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country,'' said Mark Soohoo, a McCain aide for online matters, at a conference on politics and technology. ''You actually do,'' interrupted Tracy Russo, a former blogger for John Edwards.

Not knowing how to use a computer could reinforce a notion that Mr. McCain subscribes to the old-way-of-thinking, said Michael Feldman, a veteran of the Clinton White House and a top aide to former Vice President Al Gore. It creates a problematic ''optic'' for the McCain campaign, Mr. Feldman said, especially when juxtaposed with the younger Mr. Obama, frequently photographed with BlackBerry on his belt clip.

''There's a certain tempo to the thinking of someone who uses all kinds of new media,'' said Mr. Saffo, who said he would anoint Mr. Obama, if elected, ''the first cybergenic president,'' just as John F. Kennedy was considered the first telegenic president.

McCain supporters point out that his ranking position on the Senate Commerce Committee has steeped him in issues important to the technology sector.

''If John McCain needs to rely on a young staffer to set up his Facebook page, then so be it,'' said Ed Kutler, a Republican lobbyist and former aide to the cybersavvy former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. ''I can live with that.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (90%); US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES 2008 (90%); INTERNET & WWW (89%); US PRESIDENTS (88%); INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING (76%); POLLS & SURVEYS (70%); POLITICAL CANDIDATES (68%); EMBEZZLEMENT (62%)
PERSON: JOHN MCCAIN (93%); DAVID DAVIS (56%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (81%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (94%); IRAN (79%)
LOAD-DATE: August 3, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY SEYMOUR CHWAST)
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Late Edition - Final

Night Life Reprogrammed
BYLINE: By ALLEN SALKIN
SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1374 words
THE crowd pressed forward on Tuesday night to watch the soldering contest as it entered its final stages. A dozen men, gripping hot irons, sweated over circuit boards at M1-5, a TriBeCa bar.

Their goal: win a race to assemble a primitive remote control. The prize: a lump of clear resin embedded with flashing blue L.E.D.s.

Four camera people from three Web video sites circled them. The crowd, a hundred strong, sipped glasses of dark beer and wine. Who would be the first contestant to jump up, point the remote at a television resting on a side table, and turn it off?

The tension!

The contest was the first order of business at IgniteNYC, a techie event series that started in Seattle in 2006. Later that night, there were super-speedy PowerPoint presentations, and, from the laptop and smartphone-bearing legions aligned on a banquette, a barrage of live blogging. IgniteNYC was just one of 12 tech events listed that evening on Garysguide.org, a new Web site that offers a social calendar for ''Tech and New Media Folks'' in New York. In Midtown, there was the screening of a wine documentary followed by a tasting led by Gary Vaynerchuk, the colorful host of Wine Library TV, a video blog.

Something new is happening in the Silicon Alley night. A decade ago, a typical party for New York techies would be held at a glitzy club to celebrate the start of a Web site. There might be minor celebrities, go-go dancers, an open bar and pricey giveaways all to build brand-awareness, which, it was believed, would somehow, someday, lead to profitability.

But when the Internet bubble collapsed, so did the Silicon Alley 1.0 party scene. What remained was more buttoned-down and sedate. Cybersuds, a low-key monthly networking party, started in 1994 at a TriBeCa bar, evolved into a formal technology conference and then around 2003 disappeared.

Now, young Internet entrepreneurs, some holdouts from the old days and a few members of the city's creative class (and underclass) are engaged in a new type of party, which mashes together Silicon Alley 1.0's camaraderie and optimism, meetup.com's spontaneity and informality, Burning Man's home-brewed creativity, and a technology conference's devotion to unveiling ideas. These days many of the ideas are about producing and delivering video content.

Like any scene in gestation, a few mini-stars have emerged, appearing nearly every night at one or two events. By promoting their video blogs or online games, they seem to be trying to parlay fame on the scene to fame on the Web.

Others attend hoping to meet venture capitalists; some are just attracted to a night life that involves actually talking to creative people doing exciting things, rather than heading out to clubs and bars that beat you into silence with their thundering rhythms.

''Instead of just going out to drink and be bored,'' said Ilana Arazie, whose video blog, Downtown Diary, chronicles her love life, ''you're talking to interesting people who are starting companies and telling great stories.''

At IgniteNYC, after the soldering contest (won by Glen Duncan, an electronics hobbyist who was ecstatic) and a half-hour of drink-refilling and chatting, 16 speakers made PowerPoint presentations. Each was allowed 20 slides that auto-advanced after 15 seconds -- five minutes total -- a modified version of a format pioneered in Japan called ''Pecha Kucha,'' loosely translated as chitchat.

Nate Westheimer, the ''entrepreneur in residence'' at a venture capital firm, gave a talk on ''The Charisma Economy: Success in the Age of Authenticity.'' Charles Forman, a founder of a Web gaming company, delivered a cutting analysis of women with a fetish for dating founders of Web companies.

The dress was informal with men in T-shirts and loose pants and women in the same or in casual summer dresses. A doorman was on hand only to check identification, not to collect a cover charge or to wield a velvet rope. Outside, bicycles were locked to nearby scaffolding. Inside were some of the same people who had attended the previous evening's big event, NY Video 2.0 July Meetup, held at Webster Hall.

At that meetup, after a quick mingle and drinks from the cash bar, the crowd of about 200 sat under the disco ball to join a town hall discussion on the future of Web video.

Participating onstage were, among others, Kathleen Grace and Thom Woodley, the founders of Dinosaur Diorama Productions, which produces entertaining videos distributed on YouTube and elsewhere; Jay Smooth, a disc jockey on WBAI with a video blog about music, Ill Doctrine; and Sarah Austin, the founder of Pop17, a Web site posting her video interviews with tech-world celebrities.

A debate about what to call the Web video business quickly broke out.

''I look at the term 'Internet TV' as the same thing as 'vegetarian chicken,' '' said Mr. Smooth, explaining that Web video is a new art form that should not be compared to the stale stuff flowing from television sets.

Someone else suggested ''video blogs'' or ''Web shows.''

''Webcasting!'' said another panelist. Standing near the bar during the discussion was Dina Kaplan, a founder of blip.tv, a distributor of Web shows and the organizer of yet another regular gathering, the Founders Club.

''There are different scenes within the scene,'' Ms. Kaplan said. ''This is the video geek content scene, the crowd that used to be text bloggers.''

She said another subscene is ''the uber geek techie crowd,'' which encompasses NYC Resistor, the group that organized the soldering contest with IgniteNYC and opened a workshop in Brooklyn where it is building L.E.D. artworks and microcontrollers.

Then there's Burp Castle, Ms. Kaplan said, the East Village bar where video producers frequently gather. ''They'll do a tweetup and say 'Let's go to the castle,' '' Ms. Kaplan added, referring to Twitter, the social-networking service that allows users to send out brief messages -- ''tweets'' -- to large groups of friends via cellphone.

Ms. Kaplan left the meeting halfway through so she could attend another event, the Glasshouse, a networking party for entrepreneurs at the Soho House in the meatpacking district.

While the Glasshouse attendees were generally more seasoned than those at the other techie events, few of them were wistful for the old free-spending days of Silicon Alley 1.0.

Before 2000, ''I went to one party where they hired Whoopi Goldberg to come,'' said Annalise Carol, a communications consultant.

''Now the parties are more real,'' Ms. Carol continued. ''They're smaller and full of people who are actually doing substantive things.''

Since most tech events are free and open to anyone, they offer what so many people still come to New York to find, a rung to begin climbing.

An Indian immigrant, Gary Sharma, the founder of Gary's Guide, said he began attending events seven months ago because he wanted to explore the potential for a software start-up company.

To keep track of the nightly happenings, he assembled a list for himself. Friends saw it and began asking him to e-mail it to them.

In February, he put the list online, calling himself the Silicon Alley Reporter. By May, he realized he might want to expand to other cities and changed the name to something less geographically rooted. Gary, like Craig, is a name that might work anywhere. He has begun sister sites in Boston, Washington, Chicago and, two weeks ago, Los Angeles.

Now he is a nightly fixture at New York parties, always wearing a bright red tie and one of his four suits left over from his days working as a marketer for a consulting company on Wall Street.

''Steve Jobs has his black turtleneck and jeans,'' he said before watching the soldering event at IgniteNYC. ''I have my red tie.''

Six minutes before the start of the contest, when the other competitors were already in place around a steel table laden with electronic equipment, Mike Lehman, a hacker, rolled in his luggage holding soldering gear. He asked the organizer, Bre Pettis, if it was too late to participate.

''No,'' Mr. Pettis, who moved to New York last year, told him. He led Mr. Lehman to an open spot at the table where the newcomer began setting up. ''You're right on time.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (89%); INTERNET & WWW (89%); INTERNET VIDEO (76%); WEB SITES (76%); CELEBRITIES (75%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (74%); CONFERENCES & CONVENTIONS (66%); DOCUMENTARY FILMS (66%); VENTURE CAPITAL (61%); ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (56%); BRANDING (50%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SEATTLE, WA, USA (79%); NEW YORK, NY, USA (73%) NEW YORK, USA (91%); WASHINGTON, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (91%)
LOAD-DATE: August 3, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: GEEKS GALORE: IgniteNYC runs tech-theme social events, like this soldering contest. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANNIE TRITT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(ST1)

ONE WORD: VIDEO Above, venture capitalists and others gathered last week at Webster Hall in Manhattan to discuss the future of Web video. Among the organizers of such events are, at right in the far left photo, Bre Pettis and, center at left, Dina Kaplan. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANNIE TRITT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(ST10)

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Late Edition - Final

Launch of Private Rocket Fails; Three Satellites Were Onboard
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 21
LENGTH: 389 words
A privately funded rocket was lost on its way to space Saturday night, bringing a third failure in a row to an Internet multimillionaire's effort to create a market for low-cost space-delivery business.

The failure occurred a little more than two minutes after launch, about the time of first stage separation, and the vehicle appeared to be oscillating before the signal was lost.

''We are hearing from the launch control center that there has been an anomaly on that vehicle,'' said Max Vozoff, a launch commentator for the company, on a Webcast of the event soon after the live video feed from the rocket went dead.

The two-stage Falcon 1 rocket was manufactured by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, based in Hawthorne, Calif.

Elon Musk, an Internet entrepreneur, founded the company, known as SpaceX, in 2002 after selling his online payment company, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion. The company, which has been hailed as one of the most promising examples of an entrepreneurial ''new space'' movement, now has 525 employees.

The rocket was launched from the Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific shortly after 11:30 p.m. Eastern time, after several hours of delays and one aborted launch attempt.

The first Falcon 1 launch, in March 2006, failed about a minute into its ascent because of a fuel line leak. A second rocket, launched in March 2007, made it to space but was lost about five minutes after launching because it began rolling uncontrollably.

On this flight, the Falcon carried three small satellites for the Department of Defense and NASA.

The company is also developing a larger rocket, the Falcon 9, with nine engines in the first stage. That vehicle is intended to provide cargo services to the International Space Station under a contract for NASA after the shuttle program winds down in 2010.

SpaceX performed a successful test firing of that rocket at its facilities in McGregor, Tex., last week. The company has further Falcon 1 launches in the works.

Charles Lurio, an independent space consultant, said that it should not be surprising to lose single-use rocket vehicles in the early stages of development, because their design does not allow test flights.

''It's all or nothing once it leaves the pad,'' he said. ''But I hope SpaceX keeps trying. They're very competent people.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: INTERNET & WWW (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); SPACE EXPLORATION (89%); SPACECRAFT (88%); SATELLITE INDUSTRY (78%); SPACE INDUSTRY (78%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (78%); DELAYS & POSTPONEMENTS (76%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (76%); ELECTRONIC BILLING (73%); WEBCASTS (70%); SPACE STATIONS (63%)
COMPANY: PAYPAL INC (56%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (51%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (56%) UNITED STATES (56%)
LOAD-DATE: August 3, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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Late Edition - Final

Even the Giants Can Learn to Think Small
BYLINE: By JANET RAE-DUPREE.

Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.

SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; UNBOXED; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 839 words
BACK in the waning days of the 20th century, little start-up companies couldn't wait to get big. Growth was their entree to the upper echelon, to millions in venture capital and tens of millions more in an initial public offering of stock. Getting big meant taking advantage of economies of scale, putting the company name on a ballpark, creating a global distribution network and hiring the industry's best to conduct big-picture research.

Size mattered.

It still does, of course, but the tables have begun to turn. After spending decades growing and merging themselves into their behemoth proportions, big businesses are rediscovering the charms -- and the innovative side effects -- of thinking small. By breaking huge business units into smaller, nimbler teams, companies stand a chance of rekindling the creative spark that got them rolling in the first place. After all, ''small is the new big,'' as Seth Godin, a prolific blogger and author, puts it in his 2006 book of that name.

It is a point of view shared by a diverse group of business leaders, management consultants and information technology experts. According to Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab, the company that created and operates the virtual world of Second Life, companies seeking to foster creativity must find ways to break apart the bureaucratic hierarchies now smothering it. Optimizing a company for creativity involves helping individual employees of every rank develop an entrepreneurial spirit. In Mr. Rosedale's view, the most creative work environment is one where every employee, regardless of job title, has enough freedom to develop that sense of personal initiative.

''Most companies erroneously focus on competition and on differentiation from their competitors,'' he contends. ''The business opportunity lies in turning creativity into productivity.''

Decentralizing the hierarchy opens the door to creativity, giving workers the leeway they need to make significant decisions without first jumping through executive management hoops. ''The idea,'' he says, ''is to enable a creative environment where there's a good degree of experimentation.''

Optimizing a company for creativity also optimizes it for small-group collaboration. And that opens the door to new information technology that lets team members work cooperatively from anywhere on the planet. ''That's the revolution that's making all of this possible,'' Mr. Rosedale says.

Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, agrees that new collaboration technologies are at the heart of the get-small movement. In ''The Future of Work,'' his 2004 book, he says the transformation will not come directly from the new technologies but from the desire of workers for ''noneconomic goals'' like freedom, personal satisfaction and fulfillment. ''How much energy and creativity might be unlocked if all the members of an organization felt in control?'' he writes.

Evidently, quite a bit. At Avocent, an information technology management company based in Huntsville, Ala., customers, product developers and testers had gotten to the point that they rarely interacted. Each group felt that it lost control of a project too early in its progress. So, in March 2007, the company revamped development so that members of all three groups would work on the same team, following a project from start to finish and making changes as needed. With customers, programmers and testers working virtually side by side, Avocent tripled production without adding workers.

By making sure products in development meet customer needs each step of the way, Avocent has been able to avoid spending weeks correcting errors in the final product, says Ben Grimes, chief technology officer. ''That is the nirvana of working in global teams,'' he says. ''It breaks down the walls of isolation and streamlines collaboration. I don't think innovation can occur without having that diversity in geography and experience.''

That desire for diversity can be part of the motivation for global mergers and acquisitions, which probably won't abate as industries mature. But as smaller companies join ranks and become corporate behemoths, the merged companies very likely will try to maintain smaller, more creative units. Rather than a monolithic giant, tomorrow's creative corporation will look more like a collection of smaller companies flying in close formation.

Mr. Rosedale reports that he has already seen similar developments within Second Life's virtual businesses. In a way, he says, Second Life can be used as ''a terrarium for looking at these changes.''

It is time for real-world executives to learn from their virtual counterparts, he says: ''They're going to figure out that they don't need to control this from the top down. These companies will still get put together, but they're only going to be connected at the balance sheet and at the level of finance. Information technology levels the playing field.''