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The European Commission is switching all staff in “non-critical functions” to remote working from next Monday in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In an email sent to staff today the Commission writes that president Ursula von der Leyen has activated a business continuity plan that requires all but those in “critical functions” to telework from next Monday.

Previously the EU’s executive body had been implementing limited teleworking for high risk employees such as those returning from Italy for 14 days after their return.

It’s not clear how many Commission staff are defined as carrying out “critical” functions — but it seems likely that thousands will be working from home or remotely next week. In all, the Commission employs around 32,000 people.

Per the email, staff deemed to be carrying out a critical function will already have been informed they are expected to continue to present at work, with “modalities” and “guidelines” to explain working arrangement slated to follow “soon”.

Earlier this week the European Parliament also told staff to prep for mass remote working Monday. Initially vulnerable staff with pre-existing health conditions had been told to telework to limit their risk of being exposed to the novel coronavirus. 

The Commission had also already been instructing staff to switch to videoconferencing for missions, meetings and committees where possible.

Belgium, where the Commission is mainly based, has been reporting rising numbers of cases of Covid-19. Today its federal health authority reported 85 new cases today — bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 399.

The Commission itself reported the first cases (two) of Covid-19 among staff earlier this month. 

In recent weeks a number of politicians in countries across Europe have also been confirmed as having contracted the novel coronavirus.

Source: Tech Crunch

Yext says that in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s making its Yext Answers site search product free for 90 days.

You might not see an obvious connection between site search and a worldwide pandemic. You might even think this sounds like a marketing gimmick. But Yext CEO Howard Lerman said that for the past 10 days, the company has seen a spike in coronavirus-related searches across sites that use Yext Answers.

After all, Lerman said Yext has a lot of customers in the healthcare industry, such as the IHA medical group. But even beyond that, companies are getting related questions, whether it’s a hotel getting asked about their cleaning procedures, or an airline being asked whether it’s safe to fly or a vodka company getting asked about whether vodka can be used as hand sanitizer.

Businesses could try to answer those questions on a single web page or blog post, but that’s probably not going to be comprehensive. Yext Answers offers a way to present and save this information in a much more structured way, so that a visitor can jump to the exact answer that interests them. In addition, it provides data on what visitors are searching for, so companies can answer the questions that people are actually asking.

Yext is also offering a free plugin that includes frequently asked questions about the coronavirus, with answers sourced directly form the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We have a product that could be pretty useful right now,” Lerman said. “We don’t want people to be getting wrong answers in the time of a global pandemic.”

He added said that the company would normally charge around $100,000 for three months of Yext Answers. However, the free offering will be limited to 1,000 entities (which can be FAQs, locations or anything else), and Lerman said most paying customers are already using more than that.

While the product is free, the company will still schedule an initial setup call with a Yext administrator and provide ongoing email support. You can read more on Yext’s new website.

Source: Tech Crunch

Are you working from home? Are you lonely? Do you miss human interaction? Did you finally get your home office setup looking good? Then join us today for our first ever (and possibly last) TechCrunch-Equity Livestream-Hangout Extravaganza.

From Team Equity we’ll have Danny Crichton, Alex Wilhelm, new addition Natasha Mascarenhas, our producer Chris Gates, TechCrunch Editorial Director Henry Pickavet, and perhaps even some puppies. It’s BYOB, naturally, but if it’s after lunch where you are, cocktails are allowed.

We’ll have a loose agenda of things to argue about, but it won’t be as much fun as it could be without you.

So join us here on Zoom. And make sure to check out TechCrunch’s Twitter handle at @TechCrunch for updates just in case we can’t figure out how to Zoom into anything.

That’s it, really. We’re excited to try this out and we’re excited to see you. Cameras on, let’s go!

Source: Tech Crunch

The coronavirus pandemic has left governments floundering, businesses unprepared and citizens scrambling for hand sanitizer like it’s worth its weight in gold.

The sense of general unpreparedness has a lot of people on edge. Not surprising, since we’re on the edge of a global health emergency and it’s impossible to predict exactly how government, travel or day-to-day business will operate during this outbreak.

Many tech companies already allow their staffs to work from home. Remote work policies are increasingly popular across the tech industry as companies push flexible working arrangements. In doing so, these companies have to prepare their IT infrastructure to accommodate remote working.

Granted, setting up a company to allow remote work is not an overnight job. It requires time and effort — but more importantly, investment and budget. It’s an even bigger task to do it securely and without opening a door for hackers to walk in. But with the coronavirus spreading, now’s a better time than ever to roll out a plan.

Secure your remote setup: The basics

Remote work has one fundamental security principle: Let in the right people to do the right things. In other words, your employees need to be able to do their jobs as if they were at the office.

Source: Tech Crunch

Bollinger Motors, the Michigan-based startup known for its rugged electric SUV and pickup truck, unveiled Thursday a chassis designed for a Class 3 commercial vehicle that has the potential to expand its customer base.

The move reflects a broader trend among EV startups to at least consider commercial applications for its vehicles in an effort to generate more revenue in this capitally intensive business. Rivian, for instance, has struck a deal with Amazon to provide electric vans for the e-commerce company.

Now, Bollinger Motors is jumping in. The company’s CEO Robert Bollinger said they saw potential for commercial applications when the company first built its B1 SUV.

“When we first built our Class 3 B1, we knew there was a commercial aspect to the platform,”  Bollinger said in a statement. “Not only cab-on-chassis, but entirely new truck bodies can fit on our E-Chassis, and help propel the world to all-electric that much faster.”

This E-Chassis is the same platform shared with Bollinger’s B1 SUV and the B2 Pickup. It will also accommodate future models and other trucks developed by Bollinger Motors, the company said. The E-Chassis can be customized to meet customer requests and will include 120 kWh battery pack or an optional 180 kWh battery pack, all-wheel drive, dual motor, portal gear hubs, hydraulic anti-lock power brakes and the ability to carry a 5,000-pound payload.

The E-Chassis will be built along its B1 and B2 vehicles and will be available to commercial customers in 2021, the company said.

Source: Tech Crunch

These days, most of the games developed need to be social, multi-platform and extensible, but there are only a few developers with the expertise to bring those toolsets to the profusion of new games that crop up every year.

Well now those development studios can turn to Pragma, which is building the back-end toolkit for gaming companies so that their developers can focus on what they do best — making games.

It’s basically taking a page from the application development playbook where off-the-shelf toolkits can reduce the time it takes to get an app into the market by months, according to Pragma chief executive Eden Chen. In the game industry, a game can stay in beta for years as developers work out the kinks.

“In the game world, because of the necessity to build multiplayer, the length to launch a game has gotten way way way way longer. Games are taking five to ten years to launch out of beta,” Chen said. 

Founded by Chen and former Riot Games engineering lead, Chris Cobb, Pragma is offering a “backend as a service”, according to the company, selling a toolkit that includes accounts, player data, lobbies, matchmaking, social systems, telemetry and store fulfillment.

In a way it’s a compliment to the front end game engines from companies like Epic, the creator of Fortnite.

Indeed, Epic had announced plans to create a back end system for game developers of its own, but Chen sees the benefits of having an independent operator doing the work — not a potential competitor.

Pragma’s investors agreed. The company raised $4.2 million in funding from a clutch of high quality firms and individual investors led by the Los Angeles-based Upfront Ventures with participation from Advancit Capital, and angel investors Jarl Mohn, President Emeritus at NPR and former Riot Games board member; Dan Dinh, founder of TSM; and William Hockey, founder of Plaid. 

“In a world where gaming studios have long used third-party engines to power their front-end development, it makes no sense for the same studios to spend millions of dollars to build their own custom back-end,” said Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures and board member at Pragma, in a statement. “This broken system has lasted for so long because creating a reusable, platform-agnostic backend is not just extremely complex but rarely prioritized compared to the game.” 

The gaming industry is a $139 billion behemoth that in some ways lags behind its technologically savvy peers in creating off-the-shelf tools to speed production. They’re combinations of social media platforms like Facebook and Snap, and big, high budget movie productions, but lack any tools to simplify the process of development or ensure that persistence, scale, and feature complexity don’t lead to downtimes. And downtimes could mean millions in expenses and lost revenues, Pragma said.

“Creating online multiplayer games is increasingly complex and expensive. Studios are hindered by the need to not just create compelling games, but also to build custom server technology to operate their game” said Chris Cobb, the company’s chief technology officer said in a statement.  

The company currently has one customer on its platform and will launch to an exclusive set of beta users in late 2020.

Source: Tech Crunch

Software giant Salesforce announced the addition of a few new tools in healthcare management to the Salesforce Health Cloud this week, with the goal being to help payers and providers utilize a more comprehensive system.

The first is a healthcare provider management feature allowing doctors and other healthcare workers a way to efficiently manage new accounts and activities from a single point.

Also included in the update is Einstein Analytics for Healthcare, which will provide pre-built dashboards and industry KPI’s to help referral managers keep track of their performance.

Destinations, the third addition from Salesforce, is a no-code healthcare interoperability solution available in Salesforce’s AppExchange program and provided in partnership with Bridge Connectors. Destinations allows healthcare organizations to integrate internal data with Salesforce’s Health Cloud without the need to write any code.

Several large healthcare organizations rely on Salesforce’s Health Cloud for provider services, including Cancer Treatment Centers of America, which serves cancer patients at treatment centers and hospitals throughout the U.S. and Piedmont Healthcare, which has 11 hospitals and serves in over 250 locations, according to its website. The ability to integrate to manage accounts, track analytics over time and integrate that data provides a way for these facilities to more efficiently do their work and treat patients in need in a more organized manner.

“All of this is part of Salesforce’s Customer 360 for Healthcare vision to empower healthcare and life sciences organizations of all sizes and types across provider, payer, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies to deliver connected, collaborative and personalized care and experiences,” notes a Salesforce release on the announcement. “With these new innovations, we’re working towards improving health outcomes and unlocking operational efficiencies by connecting people, data, and processes on a unified platform.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Unity has acquired AI game developer tools startup Artomatix.

The Dublin startup builds developer tools that allowed game studios to more easily create deep learning-enhanced textures that scale more convincingly. Developers can use the startup’s ArtEngine platform bring in real-world materials to their game worlds, adapting the visual patterns to their 3D worlds more quickly than existing toolsets while eliminating seams and irregularities. ArtEngine uses AI to identify visual flaws in replications and saves developers from having to endlessly tweak environments.

The company launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF back in 2015. Artomatix went onto raise just over $12 million in grants and funding from VCs including Enterprise Ireland, Suir Valley Ventures, Manifold Partners and Boost Heroes.

Artomatix’s team will continue to operate out of their Dublin offices. Unity did not share an acquisition price.

Unity, which boasts that more than half of new games are built using its engine, is an obvious suitor for Artomatix’s technology. The engine has continued to grow more powerful in recent years, but bulking up in capabilities has increased complexity and left developers with lengthy render times. If Artomatix’s technology can help game designers create the art used to populate digital environments, Unity can begin to push more workflow through AI assisted tools and save developers time.

Source: Tech Crunch

On Wednesday, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios convened representatives from a number of the tech’s biggest companies to gameplan a response to the worsening global coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Washington Post, the meeting, held remotely over the phone and through video calls, served as a brainstorming session for tech and the White House on coordinating against coronavirus misinformation, potentially aiding in the analysis of relevant new medical research and how to lend tech’s resources to support the federal government to track travelers and other complex data-driven tasks.

As Politico and the Post reported, the White House is seeking help from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Cisco and Twitter on the efforts.

Major tech companies have been proactive in protecting their own workforces from the coronavirus epidemic, even as a federal response lags. On Tuesday, Google asked all North American employees to work from home, expanding its previous guidance for Washington state-based workers. That same day, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative would work with Bay Area health research teams to quadruple the coronavirus testing capacity in the area.

In a statement following the virtual meeting, Kratsios described the coronavirus response as an “all-hands-on-deck effort.”

Source: Tech Crunch