غدًا الثلاثاء.. بداية 26 يومًا من "قدحة القيظ"

تتواصل موجة الحر على المملكة، مع دخولها مرحلة جديدة وهي "قدحة القيظ".

وقال الدكتور خالد الزعاق، عضو الاتحاد العربي لعلوم الفضاء والفلك، على صفحته بموقع تويتر، إن اليوم الإثنين (24 يوليو 2017) هو آخر أيام "جمرة القيظ" وغدًا الثلاثاء أول أيام "قدحة القيظ".

وأوضح الزعاق، أن "قدحة القيظ" تتزامن مع بداية موسم المرزم، ويبلغ عدد أيامها 26 يومًا.

وأشار عضو الاتحاد العربي لعلوم الفلك، إلى أن مواسم الصيف اللاهبة ستنتهى بنهاية "قدحة القيظ"، وهو آخر مواسم فصل الصيف اللاهبة الثلاثة، وهي المربعانية والجمرة والقدحة، ويعقبها موسم سهيل، وفيه يبدأ الصيف يتزحزح عن الأجواء.

Online Platforms Double Down on TV Programming

5 billion people with smartphones by 2020 - the first screen is mobile

Price changes in last 20 years:

Textbooks +207%
Tuition +197%
Childcare +122%
Medical care +105%
Software -66%

IT Project Progress Reporting

Progress reporting is an essential activity of project management. The project manager issues regular reports on progress against budget, schedule and scope. Include these people on your circulation list:

• Project Sponsor
• Budget Holder
• Senior Users
• Team Members

Keep the report brief and sum up the key points in your project. I recommend this simple format on a maximum of two pages:

1. Report Date
2. Overall Status
3. Project Summary
4. Key Issues
5. Identified Risks
6. Tasks and Next Steps
7. Decisions Needed
8. Key Future Dates
9. Budgeted Cost
10. Spend to Date

Anyone reading the report must be made aware of progress and know when their help is needed to keep the project on track.

Keeping people updated ensures they remain involved and committed. Regular communication is essential to the well-being of any project. Common failings in this area are:

• Poor communication channels
• Lack of honest communication
• Unwillingness to communicate bad news
• Not asking for help if it's needed

Regular progress reporting creates a valuable written record of a projects' life. Later you can look back and decide how to improve the running of future projects.

25 years of mobile evolution 📱

Monitoring Health with Digital Watch

By 2018, 2 million employees will be *required* to wear health tracking devices as condition of employment

$15.36 billion will be spent on US social network ads in 2016

Three-quarters of US marketing professionals said in August 2016 that they plan to increase their AdWords budget in the next 12 months, according to a survey from pay-per-click optimization firm Hanapin Marketing. Nearly as many said the same about mobile budgets and Facebook ads.

Over 50% of those surveyed say they'll spend more on Bing. With 41% saying they’ll spend more on Instagram, 34% on LinkedIn, 21% on Twitter, 18% on Pinterest and 15% on Snapchat, along with the 69% who will increase spending on Facebook, it’s clear that social is eyed as massively important to US marketers.

In fact, the same survey highlights that both brands and agencies said in August 2016 that the most important tactic or metric for the digital marketing industry over the previous 12 months was social advertising.

Over 50% of brands cited social advertising as most important over the prior 12 months, while 46% of agencies did the same. But with social, it isn’t only about advertising—38% of agencies, for example, also called social commerce one of the most important. Brands, however, find it less critical: Only 26% of respondents called it most important.

But marketing love for social media doesn’t necessarily prove it be effective. While 42% of respondents did call social effective, mobile, remarketing and text ads all got higher marks in the survey about pay-per-click ads.

eMarketer estimates a total of $15.4 billion spent on US social network ads in 2016, which accounts for 21.3% of all digital ad spending.

96% of US smartphone operating systems are Google, Android or Apple iOS.

2015 was another transformative year in media, as TV and digital interchange accelerates and the longstanding consumer habits continue to be upended. While the media landscape is often described as growing increasingly ‘fragmented’, a more accurate description might be that it’s becoming increasingly interconnected, with consumers seamlessly accessing content across more screens than ever before. The lines between desktop, mobile, TV and film are beginning to blur as the various platforms are often more distinguished by differences in use case than by the underlying technology. As a result of this changing landscape, there are a new host of issues and solutions facing marketers and publishers, such as how to effectively advertise across these platforms and how consumers’ purchasing behavior is shifting over time.

Consider some of the key trends shaping the cross-platform media landscape in 2015 and what they suggest about the future. This was the year that:

• The TV landscape continued its shifting of time and space, with more delayed, on-demand and digital viewing of TV programming than ever before.
• Digital media usage continued to grow at a fast rate, driven by smartphone app usage which is inching closer and closer to 50 percent of all digital media time spent.
• Several traditional print publishers made huge gains with their digital audiences by making effective use of mobile to attract new readers and becoming more digitally-savvy operations.
• Digital got exceedingly close to becoming the largest advertising medium despite facing continued challenges such as viewability, invalid traffic (IVT) and the more recent issue of ad blocking.
• Consumers significantly accelerated their use of mobile devices for both shopping and purchase activity.

Smartphone apps have driven 80% of the growth in digital media usage over the past 3 years.

Digital media time in the U.S. continues to increase – growing more than 50 percent in the past three years, with nearly 90 percent of that growth directly attributable to the mobile app. Mobile has grown so fast that it’s now the leading digital platform, with total activity on smartphones and tablets accounting for two-thirds of digital media time spent, and smartphone apps alone now capturing roughly half of digital media time.

Why have apps become such a powerful force in our daily media lives? The power of habit. The 2016 U.S. Mobile App Report explores the dynamics of mobile media consumption, audiences, and user habits to understand what’s behind this surge in mobile activity, and how publishers and advertisers can take advantage.

Some key topics covered in the report include:

• The implications of smartphone apps’ growing share of digital media usage time
• The dynamic between mobile web’s critical role in expanding audience reach and the app’s role in high user engagement
• The value of the smartphone home screen, how users interact with it, and other consumer habits on mobile
• Demographic and behavioral profiling of the app users, including heavy app downloaders
• Deep dives into some of the largest and fastest growing apps, including Facebook, Snapchat and Pokémon GO
• The top apps among Millennials, and this group’s influence in all facets of app behavior

Number of years to reach $1 billion from date founded