"When your business is based on delivering live, broadcast-quality video streams for high-profile events to massive audiences across the world, having strong technology backing you is vital, " said Ben Rolling, vice president of development for AEG Digital Media, the leading provider of complete webcast management and media services for live streaming events and online video.

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While everyone knows about the old stand-bys for back-ups, such as using CDRs or a Zip drive to store your information, or even e-mailing a file to yourself, new technology makes backing up even easier.

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There will be no political interference, he insists, in its investments, which will be made by a private-sector manager (due to be appointed in December) in specialist venture-capital funds backing technology-based businesses.

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Finally, he offered a glimpse of some very un-Google-like technology the company is backing: Geothermal.

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Again, however, the technology needs a flexible backing to drive it.

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Cispa has also secured the backing of several technology firms, including the CTIA wireless industry group, as well as the TechNet computer industry lobby group, which has Google, Apple and Yahoo as members.

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Have a groundbreaking technology, millions of dollars in backing and a clear path to market?

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Preserving vast tracts of land is a far different activity from backing a promising renewable energy technology, but protecting land is nonetheless important.

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Isis and Google are backing conflicting versions of the same technology (Near Field Communications, or NFC), and equally significant players like PayPal are going entirely different directions with cloud-based (rather than hardware-based) mobile payment initiatives.

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During the 2012 election, Obama won technology hub Silicon Valley, continuing a trend of technocrats backing Democrats.

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DARPA, the technology research arm of the Department of Defense, is also backing the firm.

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They were expected to make up a bigger slice of disc sales after Blu-ray won the backing of Hollywood studios earlier this year over the rival HD-DVD technology.

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Melissa Nobles, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specialises in apologology (our word), says that they can give official backing to a particular view of history, help contain political grievances peacefully and encourage public-spiritedness among alienated parts of the population.

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Here too Mr Carter may have helped: he won the backing of the gathered Latin leaders to a two-year moratorium on high-technology arms purchases.

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One Nobel laureate, Merton Miller, has given his backing to an idea that first surfaced at Hong Kong's University of Science and Technology.

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But nonprofit groups such as Common Cause and the Center for Democracy and Technology last year pressed for a direct election of at-large board members and, after winning the backing of the U.S. government, convinced ICANN to follow their advice.

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