I've never seen Summly. I guess it's in the Yahoo mobile app now?

But there's little doubt this was also an "acqui-hire," in which the person being bought is just as important as the product. D'Aloisio is now working full time in Yahoo!'s London office, and his youth, his energy and his undeniable it-factor have brought the formerly musty tech giant a much-needed injection of cool. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer —who lends the company some of her own it-factor—praises his "commitment to excellence in design and simplicity" and says she is "inspired by the creativity and tenacity Nick brings to his work."

While D'Aloisio spends 80 percent of his work time retooling and improving Summly (which has already been integrated into Yahoo!'s iPhone app), the other 20 percent is devoted to imagining the expansive challenges he'll take on next.  He predicts there will be summarization programs that do for video what Summly does for the written word. He has grand thoughts about using technology to aid learning and would like to help fellow autodidacts while disrupting the old educational models.