NEW YORK: Groups including the United Nations, Harvard University, Google Inc and an organization co-founded by actor George Clooney are launching a project using satellites to "watch" Sudan for war crimes before a vote that could split the African country in two.
The Satellite Sentinel Project, which begins on Wednesday, is meant to provide an "early warning system" for human rights and security violations before the Jan. 9 referendum on whether to divide Sudan into north and south.
"We want to let potential perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes know that we're watching, the world is watching," Clooney said in a statement.
The satellite project received funding for six months from Not On Our Watch, an organization co-founded by Clooney and his Hollywood friends, actors Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, David Pressman and producer Jerry Weintraub.
The group has been active in raising money to help the many displaced people in the Darfur region of western Sudan, which has been ravaged by war and genocide.
Clooney told Time magazine in an article posted on its website that he came up with the idea three months ago when he was in Sudan meeting refugees from its last civil war. He called it "the anti-genocide paparazzi," referring to photographers who follow celebrities taking their pictures.
Under the project, commercial satellites over northern and southern Sudan will photograph any burned and bombed villages, mass movements of people, or other evidence of violence.
The United Nations' UNOSAT program will collect and analyze the images, Harvard's Humanitarian Initiative will provide research, more analysis and corroboration from field reports from the anti-genocide Enough Project,
Google and Trellon Llc, an Internet development firm, designed a Web platform for public access to information with the goal of pressuring Sudanese officials and other groups.
People in Sudan's oil-rich south are widely expected to vote to split away and form a new country in the referendum that was part of a 2005 peace deal ending civil war between north and south.
Ahead of the referendum, violence has already flared. Last week, members of the opposition Umma Party said they were beaten and tear-gassed by Sudanese police when they left a meeting to attend a mosque for Friday prayers.
On Dec. 24, US Vice President Joe Biden phoned Sudanese Second Vice President Ali Osman Mohmed Taha to express Washington's concern about violence leading up to the vote.
The Satellite Sentinel Project, which begins on Wednesday, is meant to provide an "early warning system" for human rights and security violations before the Jan. 9 referendum on whether to divide Sudan into north and south.
"We want to let potential perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes know that we're watching, the world is watching," Clooney said in a statement.
The satellite project received funding for six months from Not On Our Watch, an organization co-founded by Clooney and his Hollywood friends, actors Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, David Pressman and producer Jerry Weintraub.
The group has been active in raising money to help the many displaced people in the Darfur region of western Sudan, which has been ravaged by war and genocide.
Clooney told Time magazine in an article posted on its website that he came up with the idea three months ago when he was in Sudan meeting refugees from its last civil war. He called it "the anti-genocide paparazzi," referring to photographers who follow celebrities taking their pictures.
Under the project, commercial satellites over northern and southern Sudan will photograph any burned and bombed villages, mass movements of people, or other evidence of violence.
The United Nations' UNOSAT program will collect and analyze the images, Harvard's Humanitarian Initiative will provide research, more analysis and corroboration from field reports from the anti-genocide Enough Project,
Google and Trellon Llc, an Internet development firm, designed a Web platform for public access to information with the goal of pressuring Sudanese officials and other groups.
People in Sudan's oil-rich south are widely expected to vote to split away and form a new country in the referendum that was part of a 2005 peace deal ending civil war between north and south.
Ahead of the referendum, violence has already flared. Last week, members of the opposition Umma Party said they were beaten and tear-gassed by Sudanese police when they left a meeting to attend a mosque for Friday prayers.
On Dec. 24, US Vice President Joe Biden phoned Sudanese Second Vice President Ali Osman Mohmed Taha to express Washington's concern about violence leading up to the vote.
Google receives more unique monthly visitors than Facebook but visitors to Facebook spend more time at the site than they do on Google properties
NEW YORK: Facebook is challenging Google's supremacy on the Internet with a radically different approach to how people live, work, play and search online.
While Google delivers search results selected by algorithms that take into account a user's Web history, Facebook boasts a richer level of personalisation based on one's own "likes" and the recommendations of Facebook friends.
Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room six years ago and is now worth an estimated $6.9 billion, refers to it as the "social graph."
"I think what we've found is that when you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about they tend to be more engaging," Zuckerberg said in an interview with the CBS show " 60 Minutes."
"The social graph is incredibly broad," said Wedbush Securities social media analyst Lou Kerner, picking up on Zuckerberg's favorite phrase. "It includes not only what you do and what you like but people you know and what they like and the companies you interact with."
For some Internet watchers like Kerner, Facebook is constructing a parallel network built around the interactions of its more than 500 million members.
"I refer to Facebook as the second Internet, maybe more valuable than the first because we're all interconnected on it," Kerner said. "Social media is an increasingly important part of how you reach people and it's a growing part of every marketer's budget," he said.
"The idea is you do not want to fight Facebook, you want to embrace Facebook and leverage Facebook because this is where people are going to spend increasing amounts of time," he said.
According to online tracking firm comScore, Google receives more unique monthly visitors than Facebook but visitors to Facebook spend more time at the site than they do on Google properties.
Since early 2010, Facebook has been rolling out features which put it on a collision course with Google -- an @facebook.com email service which competes with Google's Gmail and "Facebook Questions," a search engine of sorts which lets Facebook members ask questions and get answers from other members.
Facebook has also been facing off with Google on the hiring front, forcing the Mountain View, California-based Google to recently raise salaries by 10 per cent across the board. "They've become competitive in some areas, but it's not that Facebook has grown at Google's expense or that Facebook is growing and Google is shrinking," said Danny Sullivan, editor of technology blog SearchEngineLand.com.
"Google is not going away," agreed Kerner. "Google, in fact, I think is going to benefit from the emergence of social media. "Because what it's doing is it's driving people to spend more time online and when you're spending more time online, you end up doing more searches," he said.
"Where they've really been encroaching on each other more is in the display space," Sullivan said. "Facebook has a lot of people who buy display advertising. Google wants to sell more display advertising."
Sullivan also said Google "has been trying to encroach on their social area, but they haven't been very successful." Zuckerberg, who was named earlier this month as the Time magazine person of the year, acknowledged to CBS "there are areas where the companies compete."
"But then, there are all these areas where we just don't compete at all," he said.
Time managing editor Richard Stengel said Zuckerberg -- the second youngest person named to the cover of Time's ritual annual issue -- and his social networking service were "transforming the way we live our lives every day."
Facebook's growth is not necessarily a bad thing for Google, which has been coming under increased scrutiny from anti-trust authorities in both the United States and Europe.
"Some of it plays very well for Google," Sullivan said. "Google is able to say, 'You know, we have this stiff competition out there.' "It's not necessarily to Google's disadvantage that Facebook is growing."
While Google delivers search results selected by algorithms that take into account a user's Web history, Facebook boasts a richer level of personalisation based on one's own "likes" and the recommendations of Facebook friends.
Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room six years ago and is now worth an estimated $6.9 billion, refers to it as the "social graph."
"I think what we've found is that when you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about they tend to be more engaging," Zuckerberg said in an interview with the CBS show " 60 Minutes."
"The social graph is incredibly broad," said Wedbush Securities social media analyst Lou Kerner, picking up on Zuckerberg's favorite phrase. "It includes not only what you do and what you like but people you know and what they like and the companies you interact with."
For some Internet watchers like Kerner, Facebook is constructing a parallel network built around the interactions of its more than 500 million members.
"I refer to Facebook as the second Internet, maybe more valuable than the first because we're all interconnected on it," Kerner said. "Social media is an increasingly important part of how you reach people and it's a growing part of every marketer's budget," he said.
"The idea is you do not want to fight Facebook, you want to embrace Facebook and leverage Facebook because this is where people are going to spend increasing amounts of time," he said.
According to online tracking firm comScore, Google receives more unique monthly visitors than Facebook but visitors to Facebook spend more time at the site than they do on Google properties.
Since early 2010, Facebook has been rolling out features which put it on a collision course with Google -- an @facebook.com email service which competes with Google's Gmail and "Facebook Questions," a search engine of sorts which lets Facebook members ask questions and get answers from other members.
Facebook has also been facing off with Google on the hiring front, forcing the Mountain View, California-based Google to recently raise salaries by 10 per cent across the board. "They've become competitive in some areas, but it's not that Facebook has grown at Google's expense or that Facebook is growing and Google is shrinking," said Danny Sullivan, editor of technology blog SearchEngineLand.com.
"Google is not going away," agreed Kerner. "Google, in fact, I think is going to benefit from the emergence of social media. "Because what it's doing is it's driving people to spend more time online and when you're spending more time online, you end up doing more searches," he said.
"Where they've really been encroaching on each other more is in the display space," Sullivan said. "Facebook has a lot of people who buy display advertising. Google wants to sell more display advertising."
Sullivan also said Google "has been trying to encroach on their social area, but they haven't been very successful." Zuckerberg, who was named earlier this month as the Time magazine person of the year, acknowledged to CBS "there are areas where the companies compete."
"But then, there are all these areas where we just don't compete at all," he said.
Time managing editor Richard Stengel said Zuckerberg -- the second youngest person named to the cover of Time's ritual annual issue -- and his social networking service were "transforming the way we live our lives every day."
Facebook's growth is not necessarily a bad thing for Google, which has been coming under increased scrutiny from anti-trust authorities in both the United States and Europe.
"Some of it plays very well for Google," Sullivan said. "Google is able to say, 'You know, we have this stiff competition out there.' "It's not necessarily to Google's disadvantage that Facebook is growing."
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