Seventeen-year-old London software developer Nick D’Aloisio has accomplished a feat that few adult mobile development professionals can claim: his Summly iOS app reached number nine on Apple’s list of top apps just two hours after its release. And it has snagged an average user rating of four out of five stars.
A free news aggregation app, Summly has attracted $1 million in funding and attention from Newscorp owner Rupert Murdoch and other recognizable names. The app uses algorithms to generate summaries of news stories posted on the Web. “We worked hard on an interface that looks like nothing else on iPhone,” D’Aloisio said. “We merged algorithm with beautiful design. It’s summarizing thousands of articles every minute.”
