Fighting hunger and poverty

Published: 22 September 1999 y., Wednesday
NetAid is many things to many people: a welcome bit of Web-led charity, another chance for rich people to feel good about themselves, a monster site that had to be built in a hurry. KPMG says the NetAid site it developed in just 90 days is capable of handling the 60 million hits per hour it is expected to receive during three televised concerts on Oct. 9. The concerts will benefit the antipoverty efforts of the United Nations Development Programme. NetAid is sponsored by Cisco, KPMG, Akamai Technologies and the U.N. Development Programme, and has attracted a roster of Internet and high-tech supporters. Listed as "key participants" in the project are luminaries as diverse as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers and Wyclef Jean, a member of the band The Fugees. The concerts will be held in New Jersey, London and Geneva, with appearances by acts ranging from Busta_ Rhymes to David Bowie. The secret ingredient that_s supposed to set NetAid apart from celebrity antecedents like Live Aid is the Web, which is meant to create an ongoing community dedicated to fighting hunger and poverty. Beyond its eleemosynary mission, NetAid is a formidable piece of site development carried out by a team of 50 KPMG employees. The site, which will remain up after the concerts to support the ongoing antipoverty effort, is meant to be capable of handling 1,000 e-commerce transactions per second. Key content-delivery technology, crucial for the live streaming of concert footage to Web audiences, was provided by Akamai.
Šaltinis: Inter@ctive Week
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.

Facebook Comments

New comment


Captcha

Associated articles

The most popular articles

Churches feel the economic pain

A famous New York church is feeling Wall Street's pain. more »

Tokyo: Michelin's star city

Japan may be in recession, but Tokyo remains the world's best dining city. more »

Holland gets tough on cannabis

The Netherlands may be famous for its liberal drugs laws but in the Dutch town of Bergen Op Zoom they've had enough. more »

Free movement of workers is good for Europe's economy

A European Commission report published today shows that mobile workers from the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 have had a positive impact on Member States' economies and have not led to serious disturbances on their labour markets. more »

Citizen spycam in Seoul

South Korean stores must by law charge shoppers for plastic bags. Any infrigement would be reported to the authorities. more »

China's queen of plastic surgery

Shi Sanba is one of China's most celebrated plastic surgeon's and also dubbed the country's "Michael Jackson". more »

Q & A on Parliamentary immunity

The job of elected Members of any Parliament is to make laws that all of us are obliged to obey. more »

Thousands queue for cut-price housing

In Spain thousands have been queuing for days in the hope of gaining that crucial first step onto the property ladder. more »

French farmers flock to Paris

Scores of sheep have been shepherded through Paris as part of a demonstration to improve the lives of European farmers. more »

Stop abuse in zoos, says ENDCAP

Animal rights groups say animals are suffering from abuse and sometimes live in dire conditions. more »