Nick D’Aloisio is a 19 year old internet entrepreneur from London England. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a business executive so there were no programmers in the family. D’Alosio was inspired by Steve Jobs and Apple to get into technology and began to teach himself how to program and code. In his early programming career, he released apps such as the finger treadmill, an app that would turn your screen into a treadmill and allowed you to work out your fingers. Another one of his early apps was an app that was a picture of wood and when the user touched the screen, it would make a knocking sound. He is best known for his app Summly. Summly is an application that will condense news articles and other articles so that they only cover the key facts and important stuff. The user is able to decide which keywords to search for in articles as well as decide where the articles come from. One can keep up with their favorite sports team as well as reading about the stock market all in one app.Only after a month of publishing Summly, the app had over half a million users in 28 different countries. Summly has been taken off of the app store after it was acquired by yahoo. The app was transformed and is used in various web apps owned by Yahoo. D’Alosio started teaching himself how to program and write applications when he was 12 years old. At the age of 15 he developed Trimit, the precursor to Summly. After receiving several investments, from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, and a rather large one from a Hong Kong Billionaire, he successfully developed Summly. D’Alosio was acquired by Yahoo for $30 Million, and this year he won the Apple Design Award. As well as writing multi-million dollar applications, and working as a computer programmer, D’Alosio has managed to complete high school and is currently studying at Oxford University.
Great post, Turner! I think that this is such a clever idea. I know when reading articles, I want to read what I want to know, not all of the other stuff that was thrown in there. I like that this app is one of simplicity, not only covering the basics, but also things that are important and relevant to what you are reading. Very clever! 🙂
I find it impressive that Nick taught himself programming while only age 12, and was making apps three years later. To have that kind of self-motivation is commendable, and is a clear reason for his success.
I believe there are so many applications for this technology. Every bit of media consumption now has to be edited down to its simplest form. We are not getting more than 24 hours in a day and Nick has saved us each a few seconds when reading the news.