17歲學生研發應用被雅虎天價收購大綱
A software prodigy from London is living the Silicon Valley dream after Yahoo bought the news app he created for almost $30m.
一位倫敦軟件神童的“硅谷夢”成真，雅虎(Yahoo)斥資近3000萬美元收購了他製作的新聞應用。
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.
作爲門戶網站，雅虎將移動技術作爲扭轉厄運的重中之重。它將目光投向了英國少年尼克??達洛伊西奧(Nick D'Aloisio)和Summly，後者能夠爲小屏幕設備自動生成新聞摘要。
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.
這筆交易令17歲的達洛伊西奧成爲百萬富翁。他在12歲時自學編寫軟件程序，他將一邊繼續學業，一邊參與雅虎倫敦辦事處的工作。
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發佈後，達洛伊西奧獲得了蘋果(Apple)的稱讚，該應用躋身2012年最佳iPhone應用之列。交易完成後，Summly昨天被撤下App Store，此時它的下載量已達近100萬次。
“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.”
“尼克是一位優秀的產品思想家，”雅虎移動與新興產品高級副總裁亞當??卡恩(Adam Cahan)說，“他的確代表了他在思索的事物和‘移動’真正內涵的跨世代轉變。新一代不僅僅是以移動爲先，而且是以移動設備爲唯一上網工具。這是一種不同的視角。”
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 .
贊助Summly的有香港億萬富翁李嘉誠的風投部門Horizons Ventures，以及演員艾什頓??庫徹(Ashton Kutcher)和斯蒂芬??弗萊(Stephen Fry)、Spotify的沙基爾??汗(Shakil Khan)和Zynga的馬克??平卡斯(Mark Pincus)等技術與媒體界名人。
“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宣言是讓儘可能多的用戶在移動端用上我們的技術，”達洛伊西奧在談到雅虎的數億用戶時表示，“鑑於雅虎以內容門戶而聞名，我們將有機會從根本上改變內容消費方式。”
Mr Cahan said that the vision and technology behind Summly’s machine-learning and natural language processing abilities were “equally impressive”.
卡恩稱，Summly的機器學習和自然語言處理能力背後的設想和技術“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.”
卡恩在宣佈收購交易的博客文章中表示，儘管移動設備在改變我們的日常生活，但“大多數文章和網頁的格式是爲PC端設計，適合用鼠標點擊瀏覽。在手機或平板電腦上瀏覽它們可能構成重大難題——讀者希望更方便地找到對自己重要的內容。”
Summly and Yahoo refused to comment on the deal’s terms.
Summly和雅虎拒絕對交易的條款置評。
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對這一難題的解決方式是創建文章的“快照”，比起閱讀整篇文章，該功能可提高讀者的瀏覽速度。儘管應用將關閉，但達洛伊西奧的技術將整合進雅虎的移動應用。
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的兩位員工將遷至雅虎的加利福尼亞州總部，但就目前而言，達洛伊西奧抵擋住了硅谷的誘惑。
“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歲——我想留在家人和朋友身邊，繼續上學，”他說，“在可以預見的未來裏，我將留在倫敦。”
