I first met Nick D'Aloisio on Twitter when he was fifteen and had created Summly, a remarkable algorithm (and company) that summarized news stories into 400 characters that you could then expand into a longer article if you wanted greater depth.
I introduced Nick to our wonderful friend Stephen Fry (of whom he is a huge fan), and Stephen became a spokesperson for the company, making an entertaining and highly memorable commercial in which he and Nick sat opposite each other in quite distinctive blue chairs.
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Nick D'Aloisio and Stephen Fry. |
In March of 2013, Nick sold Summly to Yahoo for a reported $30 million, started working with Marissa Mayer and headed up a team that has created another truly beautiful and innovative news app, Yahoo News Digest, which deservedly won the 2014 Apple Design Award.
Presenting a mix of summarized news, photographs, quotes, a highly relevant Twitter feed and deeper background information, Yahoo News Digest is the first truly digital presentation of news I've seen that is uniquely that: not drawn from newspapers, nor TV but created by and for the digital (and especially mobile) age.
In the Bloomberg TV video above, Nick talks about the Digest and also about adapting it to the forthcoming Apple Watch.
If anyone has any doubts about the tremendous impact the Apple Watch will have, just ask someone ten years old or younger.
Our children watched the whole of Tim Cook's presentation and are as excited about the watch as they are about Christmas. The whole concept of a watch is new to them, and our ten year old son has already been overheard telling his friends, "When someone messages you, it will be like they're tapping you on the wrist."
Meanwhile, please download Nick D'Aloisio's Yahoo News Digest and get the freshest presentation of the news you'll find today. Nick is now eighteen, just starting at Oxford University and still working for Yahoo! He's very cool and extremely friendly. Follow him on Twitter @nickdaloisio.
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