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

A safety culture at work

UN Labour Agency Says 5,000 People Killed Everyday At Work more »

Chernobyl Shlyach in Minsk

Past Memories for Future’s Sake more »

Kurds Oust Arabs From Homes in Kirkuk

Years after they were dispossessed under Saddam Hussein, Kurds are taking what they say is rightfully theirs, evicting Iraqi Arabs and seizing their homes in northern Iraq more »

U.S. Marines on Edge in Baghdad

The U.S. military is not a police force, say military officials more »

Prosecutors take dim view of holy war on US

Russia’s top Muslim cleric, Mufti Talgat Tadjuddin has been given an official prosecutor's warning concerning his statement declaring more »

Europe is getting grayer, study finds

Fewer workers to support greater number of retirees more »

Protesters Worldwide Demand End to War

Demanding an immediate end to the war in Iraq, tens of thousands of people marched in cities around the world or demonstrated outside U.S. military bases this weekend more »

Slovenians vote to join EU and Nato

Nod for EU was expected but support for Nato had been uncertain because of Iraq crisis more »

CIS Laborers, a Niche and a New Law

Millions of Russian-speaking former citizens of the Soviet Union play a key part in the Russian economy by sending billions of rubles back to their own republics while they work in Russia more »

Global anti-war demonstrations gain momentum

Protesters massed in London today to denounce British involvement in the Iraq war more »