Google streams apps to Android handsets

Google has started streaming apps to Android phones so people can use them even if they are not installed on a handset.

It said it had introduced the technology to help people get better results when they search.

Often, it said in a blogpost, the best answers to a query were found in an app rather than a web page.

Initially nine apps have been selected to work with the streaming system as it is tested.

Bad experience

Jennifer Lin, Google engineering manager, said the firm started indexing information found in apps two years ago to bolster its larger corpus of search data.

About 40% of searches done via Google now turn up content found in apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb or Pinterest, she said.

Until now, Google has only answered queries with information that is available both on the web and in apps. Now, however, it is starting to show results that are only found in apps.

One example of when these results would show up might be when someone is looking for hotels during a spur-of-the-moment trip to an unfamiliar city, wrote Ms Lin in the blog.

Google said it was using an in-house developed streaming system to give people access to results in apps they do not have installed on their Android handsets.

This lets people try the app and use it as if it were installed, said Ms Lin. An experimental cloud-based virtualisation technology Google has developed underpins the streaming system.

Apps from HotelTonight, Useful Knots, Daily Horoscope and Gormey are among the first to be available via streaming.

Danny Sullivan, founding editor of the Search Engine Land news site, said the streaming system made visible a lot of information that was hard to get at easily.

"It's a bad experience to show links to an app that no-one can view unless they install an app," he said.

Plus, he added, it could mean data found in apps was now more widely available and could be put to other uses.

"Potentially, the new system could even cause some apps that might seem to lack linkable content, such as games, to consider app-only links," he wrote.

Streamed versions of apps are available via Google's own app and on its Chrome browser. Users must also be on a fast wi-fi connection and be using a handset running Android Lollipop or a more recent version. Lollipop was released in November 2014.

The test of the app streaming and search responses is currently only taking place in the US. Google has not said when, or if, it will be expanded to other parts of the world.

Major storm knocks out power, disrupts flights in California

The Embarcadero, the city's popular waterfront walkway, was closed due to flooding and some ferries were also canceled, stranding commuters.

SAN FRANCISCO: A major storm pummeled California and the Pacific northwest on Thursday with heavy rain and high winds, killing one man, knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes, disrupting flights and prompting schools to close.

Some 240 departing and incoming commercial flights were canceled at San Francisco International Airport and others were delayed for more than two hours, airport managers said.

San Francisco's famed cable car system was replaced by shuttle buses and a subway station was shut down through the morning rush hour because of a power outage and flooding, and the city's electrified bus system was halted in many areas, transit officials said.

The Embarcadero, the city's popular waterfront walkway, was closed due to flooding and some ferries were also canceled, stranding commuters.

Some streets and major intersections were flooded in the San Francisco area, including the westbound lanes of Interstate 280 in the East Bay suburb of El Cerrito, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Winds howled through Sacramento, the state capital, rattling buildings and whipping through trees before dawn, followed by heavy downpours. The launch of an Atlas V rocket was scrubbed from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

In southern Oregon, a homeless man camping with his 18-year-old son along the Pacific Crest Trail in the Ashland area was killed early on Thursday morning when a tree toppled onto their tent, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office said.

Portland general Electric Co and Pacific Power reported nearly 90,000 customers were without power as a storm system packing wind-gusts of 80 mph (129 kph) was moving through Oregon.

To the north, in Washington state, a commuter train that runs between Seattle and Everett was canceled for two days beginning on Thursday after a mudslide on Wednesday, local transit officials said.

"In certain parts of the West Coast this could be the most significant storm in 10 years," National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Boldt said.

The Weather Service issued flash-flood, heavy-surf and high-wind advisories, warning that torrential rains could lead to mudslides in foothill areas of California scarred by wildfires earlier this year.

The storm was expected to provide only a small measure of relief from California's record, multi-year drought that has forced water managers to sharply reduce irrigation supplies to farmers and prompted drastic conservation measures statewide, weather officials said.

As much as 3 feet (1 metre) of snow is predicted this week for the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. But meteorologists said many months of rainfall would be needed to pull the state out of the drought.

The Shasta Lake area of Northern California received 5 inches (13 cm) of rain overnight, and up to 4 inches (10 cm) were expected in California's Central Valley, the state's agricultural heartland, as well as in Sacramento, the weather service said.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co reported that nearly 227,000 customers lost power during the storm on Thursday morning. Cities in the peninsula area south of San Francisco were hardest hit by outages.

Several Bay Area school districts, including San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, canceled classes due to the storm.

The storm was expected to move into Southern California in time for the Friday morning commute, in what would be the area's second major storm in a week.