Stories by Bob Brown

Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered the commencement address to the George Washington University Class of 2015 on Sunday, May 17. He reflected on negative and positive influences in his life, from Gov. George Wallace to President Jimmy Carter to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, urged students to find their direction and to make a difference in the world. Here's the <a href="https://commencement.gwu.edu/sites/commencement.gwu.edu/files/downloads/GW%20Commencement%20Transcript%205-17-15.pdf">transcript from his talk</a> as well as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fJMBW-9LTI">video, which is below</a>.

IBM's Andy Thurai didn't quite put the words into former <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=40824">RSA CTO Deepak Taneja</a>'s mouth, but did prompt him by asking at the start of a <a href="http://tiestartupcon.com/">TIE Startup Con</a> panel in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month whether Internet of Things security is a "time bomb ready to explode."

Unicorns are all the rage these days, and we're not talking about the ones in fantasy stories or on your kids' bedspreads. The unicorns that people at events like last week's <a href="http://tiestartupcon.com/">TIE Startup Con</a> (formerly TIEcon East) are agog over are private companies with valuations of $1 billion or more, such as co-working office space provider <a href="https://www.wework.com/">WeWork</a> and data virtualization company <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2216568/security/actifio-debuts--introduces-new-data-protection-applications.html">Actifio</a>, whose founders talked shop during the opening panel at the Cambridge, Mass., get-together for entrepreneurs and investors.

Google has alerted users of its <a href="https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/">PageSpeed Service</a> for making websites zippier that it will be killing off the tools as of Aug. 3.

Cisco’s choice of Chuck Robbins, Senior VP of Worldwide Field Operations, as the company’s next CEO came as a surprise given that two Cisco presidents were seen as frontrunners for the job.

15 classic games nominated to be inducted as first class of Video Game Hall of Fame in Rochester.

While complaints about college commencement speaker choices have become a rite of Spring on campuses in recent years, most technology industry-related commencement speakers have avoided such controversy. However, an editorial writer for the UCLA school newspaper -- the Daily Bruin -- isn't happy with the choice of ex-Microsoft CTO and co-founder of Intellectual Ventures <a href="http://www.nathanmyhrvold.com/">Nathan Myhrvold</a> as this year's pick.

<a href="http://www.datatorrent.com">DataTorrent</a>, which claims its software can process billions of events per second in Hadoop clusters, has received $15 million in Series B funding.

Dan Fredinburg, an engineer who worked on many of Google's most exciting projects during his 8 years with the company, died over the weekend in an avalanche on Mount Everest triggered by Nepal's devastating earthquake</a>.

A man suspected of committing as many as 2 dozen car and house break-ins was arrested for burglary in a Boston suburb on Tuesday after being identified from a home surveillance camera and implicating himself via Facebook.

Investors this week poured at least $350 million into cloud computing companies focused on everything from security to Hadoop clusters to industry-specific apps.

The Boston Athletic Association (BAA) has warned participants in next Monday's Boston Marathon against posting their bib numbers on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, or risk having their results wiped out.

Three MIT grads this week are celebrating the 10th anniversary of their clever <a href="http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/">SCIgen</a> program, which randomly generates computer science papers realistic enough to get accepted by sketchy technical conferences and publishers, with a brand new tool designed to poke even more fun at such outfits.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has been named as the speaker for the 5,000-strong <a href="http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2015/04/040915-president-universityspeaker.html">Virginia Tech Class of 2015 commencement</a> on May 15 at Lane Stadium/Worsham Field.

Microsoft so far this year has been the most acquisitive company in enterprise IT, snapping up at least four firms on top of four others that it bought in the last two months of 2014. And while the buyouts might at first glance appear scattershot we're talking text analysis, calendaring and digital pen startups among others -- there does seem to be a grand plan here.