17岁少年研发应用被雅虎天价收购
Moment of youth for Yahoo as it buys key app
A software prodigy from London is living the Silicon Valley dream after Yahoo bought the news app he created for almost $30m.
一位伦敦软件神童的“硅谷梦”成真，雅虎(Yahoo)斥资近3000万美元收购了他制作的新闻应用。
The web portal, which has put mobile technology at the heart of a plan to turn around its struggling fortunes, has turned to British teenager Nick D’Aloisio and Summly, which automatically summarises news stories for the small screen.
作为门户网站，雅虎将移动技术作为扭转厄运的重中之重。它将目光投向了英国少年尼克•达洛伊西奥(Nick D'Aloisio)和Summly，后者能够为小屏幕设备自动生成新闻摘要。
The deal makes a millionaire of 17-year-old Mr D’Aloisio, who taught himself to write software aged 12 and will join Yahoo’s London office while he continues his studies at school.
这笔交易令17岁的达洛伊西奥成为百万富翁。他在12岁时自学编写软件程序，他将一边继续学业，一边参与雅虎伦敦办事处的工作。
Mr D’Aloisio received acclaim from Apple after Summly’s launch, which featured as one of its best iPhone apps of 2012. It had been downloaded almost 1m times before it was pulled from the app store yesterday following the deal.
Summly发布后，达洛伊西奥获得了苹果(Apple)的称赞，该应用跻身2012年最佳iPhone应用之列。交易完成后，Summly昨天被撤下App Store，此时它的下载量已达近100万次。
“Nick is an exceptional product thinker,” Adam Cahan, Yahoo’s senior vice-president of mobile and emerging products, said. “He does represent a generational shift in the kinds of things he is thinking about and what it means to be truly mobile. That generation is not just mobile-first, they are mobile only. That’s a different point of view.”
“尼克是一位优秀的产品思想家，”雅虎移动与新兴产品高级副总裁亚当•卡恩(Adam Cahan)说，“他的确代表了他在思索的事物和‘移动’真正内涵的跨世代转变。新一代不仅仅是以移动为先，而且是以移动设备为唯一上网工具。这是一种不同的视角。”
Summly was backed by Horizons Ventures, the venture capital arm of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, and other tech and media names including actors Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry, Spotify’s Shakil Khan and Zynga’s Mark Pincus .
赞助Summly的有香港亿万富翁李嘉诚的风投部门Horizons Ventures，以及演员艾什顿•库彻(Ashton Kutcher)和斯蒂芬•弗莱(Stephen Fry)、Spotify的沙基尔•汗(Shakil Khan)和Zynga的马克•平卡斯(Mark Pincus)等技术与媒体界名人。
“My manifesto with Summly was to get our technology into as many users’ hands as possible,” Mr D’Aloisio said, pointing to Yahoo’s hundreds of millions of users. “With Yahoo’s reputation as a content portal, we have an opportunity to fundamentally change the way content is consumed.”
“我的Summly宣言是让尽可能多的用户在移动端用上我们的技术，”达洛伊西奥在谈到雅虎的数亿用户时表示，“鉴于雅虎以内容门户而闻名，我们将有机会从根本上改变内容消费方式。”
Mr Cahan said that the vision and technology behind Summly’s machine-learning and natural language processing abilities were “equally impressive”.
卡恩称，Summly的机器学习和自然语言处理能力背后的设想和技术“均很出色”。
In a blog post announcing the deal, Mr Cahan said although mobile devices were shifting our daily routines, “most articles and web pages were formatted for browsing with mouse clicks. The ability to skim them on a phone or a tablet can be a real challenge – we want easier ways to identify what’s important to us.”
卡恩在宣布收购交易的博客文章中表示，尽管移动设备在改变我们的日常生活，但“大多数文章和网页的格式是为PC端设计，适合用鼠标点击浏览。在手机或平板电脑上浏览它们可能构成重大难题——读者希望更方便地找到对自己重要的内容。”
Summly and Yahoo refused to comment on the deal’s terms.
Summly和雅虎拒绝对交易的条款置评。
Summly attempts to solve this problem by creating “snapshots” of stories that allow readers to browse more quickly than reading full articles. The app will close down but Mr D’Aloisio’s technology will be integrated into Yahoo’s mobile apps.
Summly对这一难题的解决方式是创建文章的“快照”，比起阅读整篇文章，该功能可提高读者的浏览速度。尽管应用将关闭，但达洛伊西奥的技术将整合进雅虎的移动应用。
Two of Summly’s employees will move to Yahoo’s California headquarters, but – for now – Mr D’Aloisio is resisting the lure of Silicon Valley.
Summly的两位员工将迁至雅虎的加利福尼亚州总部，但就目前而言，达洛伊西奥抵挡住了硅谷的诱惑。
“I’m 17 – I want to be with my family and friends and school,” he said. “I’m going to be in London for the foreseeable future.”
“我才17岁——我想留在家人和朋友身边，继续上学，”他说，“在可以预见的未来里，我将留在伦敦。”
华尔街日报
2013-03-26
华尔街日报
329次
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