Meeting Notes - 19 May 2015

by **bdahm** Sat May 23, 2015 5:56 pm

Chiang Mai Geeks - Notes

No free lunch - We’ve heard this expression time and again. It’s true. It’s equally true here. We don’t charge anything for our meetings, perhaps on the philosophy that you get what you pay for. Be that as it may, the River Market is providing us with a place to meet every week. They are providing us with parking, a projector and a screen and even a sound system for our videos. All they ask in return and all we ask in return is that you purchase something from the menu, even a cup of coffee or a soft drink. Information wants to be free; Food is something else. For those who may have eaten or are not hungry, a tip for the wait staff would be appreciated.

Bits and Pieces
* Facebook will now pay it’s independent contractors $15/hour.
* The Google Chrome browser now has an extension for DropBox.

Music Streaming Winning the Day
Music streaming has been on the rise for the last couple of years. Just recently streaming sales passed CD sales. Now we find that streaming music revenue has outstripped MP3 sales. Yes, people are increasingly opted to rent their music rather than own it.

When we went around the room we found that people were using Pandora, Tidal, Spotify, and some internet radio services such as iTunes Radio, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Rdio just to name a few. Though people are willing to pay the going rate of $10/month there are also ad supported versions available. Spotify, one of the most popular services, has 15 million members of which 4 million are paid subscribers, somewhere around 25%. In fact, significant numbers of people, mostly the younger crowd, get their music from YouTube.

Thailand Digital Round-up
Several things are happening in Thailand in the digital realm. People who pre-pay SIMs in their phones are required to register them by the end of July or their service will be suspended. It is possible to schedule an appointment for non-immigrant visa renewals on-line, starting 100 days before your desired appointment date. If you don’t secure a slot on the first day that the window opens, you will probably be out of luck. If you do get a slot, you can sashay into Thai Immigration at the appointed time and get waited on immediately. The third thing one can do digitally is do your 90 address registration on-line. I have yet to find anyone here in Chiang Mai who has actually done this and someone at the meeting mentioned that this only works in Bangkok.

Epic Frisbee Trick Video
Finally, I came upon a clip from perhaps my favorite videographer, Devin Graham, who shot a video of frisbee thrower extraordinaire, Brodie Smith, who does simply insane things with the frisbee. This is just incredible.

Epic Frisbee Trick Shot Adventure with Brodie Smith! in 4K

The thing I like about Devin is that he always does a behind the scene video to accompany the regular video. These are not only entertaining, but also very informative. Here’s the one that accompanied the Epic Frisbee Trick Shot Adventure.

Behind the Scenes- Epic Frisbee Trick Shot Adventure with Brodie Smith!

That’s all I have for you this week, so we’ll call it a wrap. Next week is Show and Tell and I do not provide notes for that meeting. You have to be there. See you in June.

-Bill