Posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2012 by Masha Arbisman
17 year old, Nick D’Aloisio, from London, created a news app that allows you to browse information quickly and clearly through content summaries.
“Dynamically [optimized] for the mobile size screen, Summly uses an algorithm built with NLP and Artificial Intelligence technology to analyze text and automatically summarize the most relevant pieces of news, based on the topics, keywords and news sources you prefer.” I have to admit, when I hear anything about algorithms, I am skeptical. For once though, when it comes to Summly, Nick has really come up with something successful. Each summary seems to be a good sum up of the article it comes from.
Summly allows you to read a summary of each article, read the full article, share your summaries, or just keep browsing their news feed. Sharing these summaries is really easy as well, as you can use either social channels or email. The feed consists of topics Nick found most useful: US news, technology, sport, world news, etc. Thankfully, he left room for your favorite topics- by scrolling down to the bottom of the page, you can find a plus sign icon, this allows you to “add any topic, person or theme”
Searching your favorite topics is easy!A lot of the reviews I read about Summly expressed that the app did not have quality search results. When I tried it out, the app worked just fine. I found information on Blake Lively, the San Francisco Giants, and Miley Cyrus in seconds. The only thing I was disappointed in was not finding news for the San Jose Sharks, we can blame the NHL lockout, but come on Nick, this biased user needs some hockey love.
