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

Poland Court Compensates Woman for $23K

A former shipyard worker whose 1980 firing triggered the labor protest that spawned Poland's Solidarity movement was awarded $23,000 on Tuesday for her imprisonment more than two decades ago more »

Spain approves EU charter

Spaniards have voted overwhelmingly to back the EU's new constitution in a referendum at the weekend more »

TAJIKISTAN: The year in review

Since 1993, the EU has provided the republic with 153 million euros (US $182 million) worth of humanitarian aid. more »

China shut down 12,000 internet bars in 2004

Chinese authorities shut down more than 12,000 Internet bars last year, state media said on Sunday more »

Greenpeace demands Poland ban imports of GM foods

Around 30 activists from environmental group Greenpeace blocked the entrance to the office of Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka for nearly two hours to demand that Poland ban imports of genetically modified produce more »

65 years since Stalin's deportation of Poles to Siberia

Survivors marked 65 years yesterday since Soviet occupiers began sending Poles to Siberian labour camps more »

Europe needs migrants despite unemployment

Europe needs more, not fewer, economic migrants despite public fears and high unemployment in core West European countries, EU Labour and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said on Wednesday more »

An 18 percent drop in immigration

Immigration to Israel Drops as More Russian Jews Prefer Germany more »

Polish ‘spy list’ more popular than sex on net

A leaked list containing the names of some 240,000 people who allegedly spied for Poland's former communist regime has overtaken sex as the hottest search item on the Internet in Poland more »

EU ban urged on communist symbols

Several European Parliament members have urged the EU to match a proposed ban on Nazi signs with one on communist symbols like the hammer and sickle more »