With students clearing out their dorms and apartments for the summer they often toss whatever won’t fit in their cars for the drive home. Often perfectly good items find their way onto the street for the taking.

At the University of Pennsylvania this time of year is called “Penn Christmas”. According to an article on Philly.com, blenders, refrigerators, books and microwaves were among the things left behind.  In years past it has been an all out free for all to grab the free goods but this year the chaos will be much more controlled.

All discarded items will be collected by Penn officials and distributed to homeless shelters, food banks and literacy centers. The initiative is named PennMOVES and was advertised throughout campus to ensure full participation from students.

Temple had a similar effort to collect cast offs and will be distributing them to community groups and churches.

Next time you’re checking out your reflection in front of a billboard try not to do anything too embarrassing. Depending on which advertisement you’re walking by, someone might be looking back.

A French company, Quividi, is allowing advertisers to take a peak at who is looking at their billboards and one of them happens to be in Philadelphia.

Phillyblog.com is reporting that one these”magic billboards” is in Suburban Station. The ad is for the indoor football team, the Philadelphia Soul.

Quividi’s technology allows cameras in the ads to analyze facial features to determine age and gender. According to a recent New York Times article  Quividi isn’t using race as a parameter but are able to and will in the future.

The goal of the tiny cameras is to customize images based on who is standing in front of the ad. Billboards will become more age and gender specific.

If seen as successful and not overly Big Brother like the cameras could spread to more billboards.

Be careful next time you’re picking your nose while staring at your reflection in an ad.

Philly has made the top 10 of yet another national ranking but this list is more positive than other honors the city has been awarded.

Our miserable and ugly city has been ranked as the sixth fittest city in the U.S. by the American College of Sports Medicine.

An article in USA Today listed the percentage of people who exercised regularly and maintained a healthy weight as indicators for healthy cities. This is a big improvement for Philly. Just 9 years ago our fair city was ranked as the fattest city, with 29 percent of the population categorized as obese.

 Keep it up Philly, run those Rocky steps.

If your summer break days aren’t challenging your brain like the hectic semesters most students are accustomed to then, sharpen your skills and do some good at the same time.

Freerice.com is a site that combines vocabulary words with food donations. For every word you correctly match with its synonym 20 grains of rice are donated through the UN World Food Program.

Within minutes participants can fill bowls of rice that will fill hungry bellies all over. To date more than 34 billion grains of rice have been donated.

One business school professor at Temple has had enough of the Web site ratemyprofessor.com.

Samuel D. Hodge Jr.  first struck back against disgruntled students on the rate my professor Web site but wanted to create an outlet for students to thank their professors.

The Temple News covered professors responding to angry comments in the mtvU series “Professors Strike Back”.

As the chairman of the business school’s legal dept. Hodge created Thank You Professor. The site allows students to write thank you notes to over 75 professors from Temple’s business school.

In an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Hodge said Temple is considering extending the site to all professors at the university.

For now every thank you, whether signed or anonymous, is printed and delivered to the dean of the business school.

Broad and Cecil will have a reduced posting schedule over the summer, and will resume regular posting in the Fall.

Dawn Staley, the former Olympian, WNBA All-Star and most successful coach in Temple women’s basketball history, is leaving for a job at South Carolina, as reported by Owlscoop.com.

The news had been rumored by the Philadelphia Inquirer and other media outlets, but it’s been broken as official.

This from the Inquirer’s Mel Greenberg, the Godfather of women’s basketball.

 Two other known candidates are longtime Tennessee assistant coach Holly Warlick and North Carolina head coach Sylvia Hatchell.

South Carolina, however, is believed to want to make a minority hire.

Staley, who turned 38 on Sunday, visited the campus in Columbia last week, the source confirmed, and school officials have been in touch with the former point guard since then.

The three-time Olympic gold medalist and former WNBA all-star has been a prime attraction when vacancies occur because of her success transforming Temple from a doormat into a program of national respectability.

Photo courtesy of USA Basketball.

The Freudian slip is one of the most feared things by all broadcast journalists – particularly because they usually happen when they’re LIVE!  Here are two of YouTube’s favorites.

I feel bad for this woman.  She seems like such a composed, conservative lady. 
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsoI9TsLR68 350 292]

You can tell this guy’s heart sank as soon as he said it…
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARCEXnesa7g 350 292]