The Knight Foundation just announced a $635,000 investment in Temple‘s Fox School of Business’ Urban Apps & Maps Studio. The money will go toward three summer-long training programs that will serve 300 minority high school and college-age students. About a dozen students will continue as year-round fellows, building apps to help their community.

When Mark Corpus and Mark Capriotti wanted to expand ReAnimator Coffee, they didn’t go to a bank. Instead, they turned to a hyperlocal crowdfunding website. Crowdsourcing can be used in many ways. For example, the Clorox Co. has a site called CloroxConnects, through which it solicits ideas from consumers, inventors and employees. “There are a lot of companies that are experimenting with their own in-house version of that,” said Robert C. McNamee, academic director of Temple's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute.

The Mayans predicted that the world will end on December 21. Stories about the end of the world have been told since Plato wrote about the destruction of an entire continent in “Atlantis,” says Barry Vacker, associate professor of media studies at Temple’s School of Media and Communication. “What all of these stories’ scenarios have in common is that they pose the question, ‘What if?’” Vacker is participating in a celebration of the upcoming apocalypse and has written a new book on the topic.