Technology

Early-stage founders: Don&t miss your chance to follow in the footsteps of tech giants. We know COVID-19 has created challenges for startup founders, but fear not. Disrupt SF is still proceeding as scheduled, with a Disrupt Digital Pass Virtual option. Launch your startup in the worldmost famous pitch competition, Startup Battlefield. The smackdown goes down live on the Main Stage at Disrupt San Francisco 2020 on September 14-16. Want a shot at $100,000 and the Disrupt Cup? Fill out your application to compete right here.

Companies such as Fitbit, Cloudflare, Mint.com, Dropbox, Vurb, Yammer and Getaround — to name but a few — trace their origins to the Battlefield competition. The Startup Battlefield Alumni Community — 902 companies strong and counting — has collectively raised $9 billion and produced more than 115 successful exits (IPOs or acquisitions). Thatsome impressive company to keep. Why not join their ranks?

Herehow Startup Battlefield works. First, you apply. (Pro tip: Applying and competing in the Battlefield is free and TechCrunch does not take any equity). Next, TechCrunch Battlefield-savvy editorial team pours over every application looking for approximately 20 startups to pitch on the Main Stage.

The TechCrunch team will put all participants through rigorous, weeks-long training to hone pitches, business models, presentation skills and any other startup issues that require tightening. You&ll be in fighting trim and ready to step out onto the Main Stage.

Teams have just six minutes to pitch and present a live demo to a panel of expert judges. After each pitch, the judges (we&re talking folks like Cyan Banister, Kirsten Green, Aileen Lee, Alfred Lin and Roelof Botha) will put each team through a Q-A. No flop-sweat here, thanks to all those weeks of pitch coaching.

The judges will select anywhere from four to six teams to advance to the finals. And that means another pitch and Q-A in front of a fresh set of judges. The winning team takes home $100,000, the coveted Disrupt Cup and they bask in a spotlight of media and investor attention. Startup Battlefield can be a life-changing experience for all competitors — not just the ultimate winner.

The action takes place in front of an enthusiastic audience of thousands. Plus, we live-stream the entire event on TechCrunch.com, once you sign up for the digital pass. If all thatnot enough, consider this. Startup Battlefield competitors receive a VIP Disrupt experience.

You&ll have access to private VIP events like the Startup Battlefield Reception, and each team receives four complimentary event tickets. You get to exhibit at the show for all three days, and you&ll have access to CrunchMatch, TCinvestor-founder networking platform. And you also get a complimentary ticket to all future TC events and free subscriptions to Extra Crunch.

Whew. Thata whole lot of opportunity and exposure. So, what are you waiting for? Disrupt San Francisco 2020 takes place on September 14-16. Apply to compete in Startup Battlefield for a shot at launching your dream to the world.

TechCrunch is mindful of the COVID-19 issue and its impact on live events. You can follow our updates here.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

At less than USD300, including delivery from Aliexpress (which delivers globally), this desktop PC from Chinese manufacturer Ipason is probably the most affordable Ryzen-based workstation on the market - and it can double as a gaming PC too. 

Based on the Ryzen 3 2200G APU, it can trounce Intel Core i3-800T CPUs usually found in devices at this

While the origins of its coronavirus testing program were muddled by President Trumpmisleading announcements attributing its efforts to Google and inflating its scale, AlphabetVerily health sciences subsidiary has established and grown its community-based California testing initiative, deploying drive-up testing sites and ramping the number of tests completed from just over 1,200 last Wednesday to more than 3,700 as of Saturday.

The Verily team detailed its progress in a new blog post, and CNBC reported last week that it has brought on 1,000 new volunteers from Google and other Alphabet companies to help increase its testing efforts and bring testing sites to new areas. In total, there are four testing sites in operation across California, which took two weeks to set up.

Thata lot accomplished in not a lot of time, and Verily now wants to pass on the benefits of its experience and lessons learned. It put together guidelines and resources for anyone else looking to set up a community-based testing initiative (assuming they have access to qualified laboratories, testing supplies and healthcare professionals) and provided them for anyone to download.

The guide includes various documents, including workflows for everyone involved in the drive-through testing process, as well as the type of personal protective equipment needed, and how to organize and deploy on-site staff. Thereeven full testing signage kits ready for download and printing.

These guide materials were created by VerilyProject Baseline team, working in partnership with CaliforniaDepartment of Public Health and other state governing and regulatory bodies, and they represent input from Stanford Medicine as well. Overall, the guide is intended as a way to help Verily spread the benefit of its experience, at a pace that it just can&t match via its own efforts to scale.

The company is definitely still looking to scale its own testing sites, however, and to launch new ones. This guide could help others make the most of its experience as it does so, though they&ll require a lot of access to specialized resources to replicate, even with the benefit of information shared by a team with first-hand knowledge of the challenges that mobile COVID-19 testing entails.

Governments around the world are asking everyone to stay indoors to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, and Australia is no different. With lockdown laws in place, and many of us now either working from home, or having more time on our hands indoors, we find ourselves in need of a good home office setup or a more comfortable gaming

Confluence, Atlassiancontent-centric collaboration tool for teams, is making it easier for new users to get started with the launch of an updated template gallery and 75 new templates. They incorporate what the company has learned from its customers and partners since it first launched the service back in 2004.

About a year ago, Atlassian gave Confluence a major makeover, with an updated editor and advanced analytics. Todayupdate isn&t quite as dramatic, but goes to show that Confluence has evolved from a niche wiki for technical documentation teams to a tool that is often used across organizations today.

About 60,000 customers are using Confluence daily, and the new templates reflect the different needs of these companies. The new template gallery will make it easier to find the specific template that makes sense for your business, with new search tools, filters and previews that you can find in the right-hand panel of your Confluence site.

The updated gallery features new templates for design, marketing and HR teams, for example. Working with partners, Atlassian also added templates like a job description guide from Indeed and a design system template from InVision, as well as similar use case-specific templates from HubSpot, Optimizely and others. Because most tasks take more than one template, Atlassian is also launching collections of templates for accomplishing more complex tasks around developing marketing strategies, HR workflows, product development and more.

Canon fans have a lot to look forward to in April, with the camera maker announcing a major live stream event to be held on April 20 at 1pm EDT (that would be 6pm on the same date in the UK and April 21 at 3am AEST in Australia).

There's no mention of what the event is for exactly, except to say it's to "[introduce] new products and technologies".