>p "press: her "pre in part by -- lots of brainpower on this week's show. meet a man who's going to build a super fast airplane, a concord for the 21st century. plus dave evans on all the new home assistance. and former google entrepreneur and resident turned dial pad ceo craig walker on the future of the office phone. our reporters narc new from ccst, central china television, and aren levy from cnbc, this week on "press: here."

good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. when someone comes up with a new idea, a new invention, a new way of looking at thicks the classic reaction is, it's been tried before or it'll never work or nobody wants it. and in nearly every case the critics are wrong. take the automobile, for instance, henry ford reportedly said if i had asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse. i know not to react that way when i hear a new idea. don't say it's been tried before or it'll never work. it is awfully tempting in the case of boone technology, a young group of entrepreneur who is want to build a supersonic airplane to take travelers from new york to london in a little less than four hours at twice the speed of sound to be a bit doubtful. bret shoal is the founder of boom technologies.

some drop out of college to start their first company. he dropped out of high school to start his, then went back to cloj. joined by narc new and aaron levy. i'm going to apologize, and i think you saw that setup coming that i'm going to apologize. it'll never work, it's been tried before, and nobody wants it. what's your reaction? >> well, it has been tried before. the thing about supersonic travel is it's not new, it's existed for 50 years. the problem was the technology hasn't existed to make et affordable for practical travel. so concord, roundtrip ticket new york to london would set you back $20,000. that's a bucket list kind of thing. that's not transportation. but fast forward 50 years, we have the technology to doitd in a way more affordable way. >> what technology? the materials? >> it comes down to three things -- aerodynamics, materials, and propulsion. aerodynamics, build in simulation a much more aerodynamic design than you can develop in a wind tunnel. materials, light weight,

stronger rs that can take higher temperatures, better for the stress of supersonic flight. and engine technology. concord flew an afterburner, which it looks cool at an air show, but it's way more fuel inefficient and it's also souper loud. >> you can make it affordable but then again the technology to avoid the sonic boom, i mean, i've heard that nasa and lockheed are working on one for 2019. >> mm-hmm. >> that would lessen the sound. how are you able to avoid that sonic boom or it's not even allowed flying over the u.s. was because it's so loud. >> let's start with the minimum viable product. it turns out there are over 500 routes in the world where you can fly supersonic and give people a big speed-up without worrying about the over land issue. that's where we're starting. new york to london, san francisco to tokyo, seattle to shanghai, all kinds of routes mostly over water where you can get a big speed-up without worrying about the sonic boom. that said, this airplane is much quieter than concord.

instead of sound like a bang, it's more like a car door slam. over land, we'll have to see. >> $2,500 each way new york to london. what's the price trajectory? who's your target audience? could we possibly see a drop in price with speed? >> that's where we're headed. our long-term ambition is anywhere in the world for five hours and 100 bucks. we're chipping away at that. today the technology exists to do that for the same price of a business tick class ticket. >> let me bring this in for a bit of landing and that is you haven't built the airplane yet. >> right. >> you have a bunch of experts, though. obviously my first question, lear should do this or citation. they build airplanes and you don't. >> mm-hmm. >> but you've been able to bring in experts despite the fact that your previous job was at groupon. >> mm-hmm. >> you aren't -- i mean, you're a pilot, but you don't design airplanes. how did you bring in so many experts? >> i think people underestimate what they can learn when they're motivated.

i've within a pilot for 15 years. i've loved airplanes since i was kid. it makes no sense for going backward in air travel performance when our computers and phones are better. i spent about a year self-teaching, textbooks, spreadsheet, met as many smart people as i could find. if you're going to put together a dream team on, this you can get anybody in the world we want and we found those people and got them. >> richard branson from virgin. what's his involvement with the project. >> virgin group has options on the first ten aircraft. that's a $2 billion deal there. >> but they haven't given you any money. >> option funding on the aircraft. richard's tried to buy concord multiple times for virgin. when this dling delivers, there's no way virgin won't buy the airplane. >> where's the faa on this? the. >> the regulators are all personally excited about this. they want to see some progress in air travel. one of the things that makes this practical and today all of the ketek nothings on this airplane, the materials, the aerodynamics, the flight control, the propulsion, they've

all been regulatory approved in other aircraft. so we're not going to regulators and saying let's rewrite the rules. rules are fine. we'll follow the rules. >> this sounds similar and i think this will be quite flattering, here's guy who essentially didn't know a whole lot about rockets, sent a rock tote the -- or a capsule to the international space station after a long period of time. >> right. >> he had one advantage and that was he helped found paypal, so he had a lot of money. so where's the money going to come from? >> it comes from investors and from customers. so the money is really not the problem here. >> really. >> no, it's not. >> you tear first person who has ever sat in that chair and said the money is not the problem. >> no. when this thing comes to market, we're going to sell over 1,000 airplanes. >> you have to fill the airplanes with money. >> but 1,000 airplanes times $200 million each, that's big. the investor return on that is awesome. >> i get that. we have to build the airplane first. >> right. investors are super excited. >> okay.

all right. >> and boeing and air bot? >> well, boeing and airbus, it's the classic story of optimization versus disruptive innovation. i hate to use the buzzwords but it's true here. they've been optimizing the same basic design for 50 years, but they've been making it safer and more efficient, but they haven't changed the standard of airplane performance. so boeing, they're in a battle with airbus for single market share, trying to make money on each stream line of scrimmager they share. the ceo of boeing, you can say i want to build a supersonic airplane, they'll probably find a new ceo. this needs to be nurtured in new companies. >> the idea you're building an airplane that will be sold to the major airlines? >> that's right. straightforward. we'll make the airplanes, sell them to airlines, airlines will take people around the world. >> tell us about the comforts of a supersonic ride and higher-ups, more radiation, right? >> it's actually a great ride. the higher you are, the less turbulence there is. so it will be a smoother ride. the passenger experience will be about like flying first class dmakally.

there's one seed on each side of the aisle so you don't have to choose window or aisle, your own personal overhead bin. it will be awesome on board. >> isle take the overhead bin. come back when you have an airplane. i believe in you because elon musk did it and so many others. come back went you've got yourself -- >> maybe we can do the show on the plane. this. >> this isn't years away. our first demonstrator airplane flies towards the end of next year. >> blake, we're excited for you. >> thank you. up next, google has an answer for aelectric san jose sharks the battle of the home assistant, when "press: here" continues.

welcome back to "press: here." i remember years ago trying to convince someone they needed a dvr, a tivo, and they did not see the value. of course today everybody knows they need a dvr. i bring this up because pi new gotta have thing is a home assistant. the amazon echo sit ong the kitchen counter. you talk it to and it plays music or tells you the cubs score. it has a voice. its name is alexa. less than two weeks from now, google will lease its rival to the echo called the google home. it does not have a name but it will have the power of google behind it and that may be enough. dave evans is a futurist, holds patents on all kinds of things including the connected car. he's an expert on the internet

of things as well. you were just telling me you have nine alexas in your house? >> three in my home today and six more arrive today, bringing it up to nine. >> have you had trouble convincing people why? they'll say i have siri on my phone. what's the cubs score? >> i don't think one negates the other. having it on your phone is powerful too because a phone gives you context, location, with you all the time in your pocket. but the convenience of having something in your own home, you're sit ong the couch, you say turn on my lights or play music or how many ounces in a cup, whatever you need, because you have it in the kitchen perhaps, it's powerful. the two complement each other very well. i use siri more, haven't splurged yet. what are the features you find most convenient? >> for alexa, i like the language interface, of course, like being able to just speak. i don't have to take a device out. push a button on it. i just speak. >> you can say call me an uber.

as long as you've set up the account ahead of time, it does. >> right. >> it's phenomenal in that way. google now is -- you know, they've caught on and they've got their little looks like an air freshener, that they're going to -- why did it take us so long to figure out this was going to be a thing and now other companies are copying it almost as if in a pan sncc. >> i think there's a perfect storm of technology. so everything's in the cloud so, it's accessible. i think the voice technology's gotten really well. the fact you can now speak and it understands. it's not asking you, can you clarify that or say it again. the text to speech is really good. it speaks back. and network connectivity is so ubiquitous, it's this perfect storm of capabilities coming together that enables it. this would be very challenging to do a decade ago, but you'd have something like a fridge in your home. but the price point, the

technology, perfect storm has come together to enable it. >> amazon and goog haven't tradition any li been gadget companies. they've made gadgets but when they've done so it's been sort of a means to an end to get consumers into those ecosystems and spend more time and engage. do you see these devices as a means to another end or are they in and of themselves they're going to be big sellers and make a lot of money? >> on one hand, you're selling the device itself, right? and over time you might see premium services on those devices surcharging for. bottom line, those devices help you buy things. from an amazon perspective you're now using let's say echo or alexa to purchase something with a very low barrier to -- it's very easy to use your voice, alexa, buy me x and it shows up. >> one click revolution. >> exactly. but this is no click. >> your company makes an app that brings all these things together. if this then that is a xet for

of yours, fair? you smile. >> we think we're very much next generation. we're a big fan because they proved market perez but string fi is another level. we call them flows, recipes, our ability to create flows is powerful. >> one of the ones i liked as an example is if my wireless sensor detects this or -- you know what i really liked was if my forecast says it's going to rain, turn the lights blue in the hallway before i leave. >> and adjust your irrigation system at the same time and your temperature, your thermostat. >> this is where it's really at. it's one thing to build the device but to be kind of the os of all of this. >> right. we often joke that everything's getting connected but it's not connected together. and that's where we come in. we let people connect anything to anything regardless of manufacture, protocol, standard. we make it real easy for people with no technology background to connect things together in powerful ways. at the end of the day, all this technology, unless it solves real problems it's just

gimmicky, right? we let you build great experiences with the stuff you have. >> what do you expect as far as thinking about amazon, google, and maybe facebook as the os, as the underlying infrastructure for people to build on top of? we've seen technology sort of consolidate into these main players. is this another example where these are the layers? >> they're different ecosystems. on one hand, therein lies the problem because which ecosystem do you align to? we're seeing the proliferation of ecosystems. we unify all of that. but consumers want choice. they want to pick the best product and know it works. >> doesn't look like android is going to be -- >> it will be a player for sure. >> regarding the technology, google's ceo recently said that the ability to distinguish between accents and things like that will happen in the future. they're even working towards being able to detect emotion. how far along are we? >> we're very far along.

if you call companies today for customer support, your carrier or what have you, your cable company and you express anger in your voice, it immediately accelerates you to the top of the queue. that right there, from a visual perspective, we can recognize 40 different emotions from a visual perspective. we're getting pretty close. >> when we horse race this between amazon and google, the two major players right now, it would seem google would have the ultimate advantage in that hardware is relatively easy to create. it's a box with some microphones and speakers. google's got google behind it. i mean, it's got the world's knowledge in a way that amazon may not have. is that a fair assessment? i think what google has is a few things to their advantage. one, they have their deep mind technology, the machine learning, which is really powerful, but they also have android, which is prevalent across a lot of devices, tell viss, phones and so on. and they have a lot of apps like gmail for your e-mail and google calendar. they have a large footprint and they can give you continuity of

experience where perhaps some of the other folks can't do that. >> dave evans is the cto of stringify. i highly recommend, if you're playing around, it's pretty cool. back in just a bit.

welcome back to "press: here." you can give me a call right now at 408-432-4747.

this is my actual phone number, my direct line. but i will not answer. i pretty much never answer the phone at my desk. and you can't leave voice mail because it's full. i don't check it. for most people the office phone is just simply dead. you can get a hold of me. i use e-mail all the time, twitter. our office doesn't use slack, but i hear it's great. it was introduced on this show. but the office phone, forget it. craig walker knows all about office communication. he is the inventor of grand central sold to google to become google voice. became google venture's first entrepreneur in residence and runs dial pad, which promises to make office communication, quote, delightful. now, let me ask you, if you -- i mean, you've done all these different things with start-ups with office communication. where does the love for this come from? were you the kid who has little phones or tin cans and talking to the neighbors sort of thing? >> it came from just being frustrated of how it was, right? so grand central we started

because i had three phones -- my cell, work, home number. check three different voice mails. it would drive me crazy. each one would be different. i'm like why can't there just be a number for me, if someone dials that number be, i'll take it wherever it's the most convenient. that was behind google voice and grand central. now take that to the business. the workers are around, you know, work's no longer a place you go, it's a thing you do. and so being able to take calls and take messages anywhere you are on any device you're using seems that would be a good idea. >> i've been covering tech for a decade, and i covered cisco back in, you know, the mid-2000s and this was a dream then, creating the unified communications platform. since then you've seen everything from skype up to slack and facebook at work. there is this promise of do anything, anywhere, from any device, at any time, talking to anyone. where did we go wrong?

why has this been so difficult? >> i think that first generation of what they used to call unified communications was more complex hardware sitting in a closet. the i.t. guys had to manage and it basically costs more and was more complicated. whereas now with everything in the cloud, there's no hardware, there's nothing on premise, everyone's got their mobile device, which is probably their primary phone, and we're able to build these features. >> you're an office communications company that doesn't have any hardware. >> exactly. >> i bring the hardware. my ipad, laptop, iphone, whatever. ? and you think of the i.t. department at a business. they'll have to provide you a network, have to give you a laptop, and you're probably bringing your own cell phone. wouldn't it be great just to use those three things for everything and you can do voice, video, message, voice mail, conferences, collaboration all on the things? >> at the same time when you bring your own devices lots of times you're getting calls and multiple times and crossing with your family. how do you separate all this

sort of work and regular life. >> yeah, well, interestingly enough, people give out their personal cell phone for work a lot of times because they don't have this so, that's kind of blurring has happened. way dial pad works is your personal cell phone can actually have two identities. if i'm calling my wife it will show me as my cell phone number but if i'm calling a business associate or client it will show me as my work number. i'm able to separate those two. i have two different voice mails, two different caller i.d.s, two different messaging platforms and i'm able to keep that line distinct. >> i'm with you, when off work twitter account and a personal twitter account or a facebook or whatever, you think did i just post that to the wrong one? >> it does seem sort of we're in this voice resurgence and i'm thinking of hillary clinton and her e-mails, that i bet they wish they had ha a lot of those conversations via voice. >> yeah. >> and not via e-mail. >> well, in voice is actually a super foich way to get things

done. you can troubleshoot on the fly, you can get in arguments, you can solve problems immediately without this back and forth. you can get the inflection and the emotion. that you don't get in text and in messaging. all those things used to be great because they used to take down this noise on the voice, but now there's so much noise in the texting and the messaging and the tweeting and every else, now voice is kind of this pure thing again, so i think there was a great resurgence there. >> who are you displacing? i think about a ring central or on video you've got any number of companies. when you go into a business, what are they using and what are they ripping out? >> generally they're ripping out a legacy of pbx so motorola is the -- >> like a public -- >> cbs -- >> thank you. >> office phone. >> thank you. >> the big box in the back that's wired to that desk on the phone that costs $800 and no one knows how to use. so they're looking to replace

that, and so we'll go in and say, okay, you can get rid of the entire thing, get rid of the desk phone, frankly if you want to keep a desk phone you can but most don't. now you're going to make your computer and your mobile basically be your device for all these things. >> so you're ripping out cisco, avaya, shor tell and ring central 8 x 8, they were the first generation of this but not really born in the cloud and born for mobile so it's kind of nice coming along in 2015 building it and having that latest gen all-cloud service. >> everything is so cloud again dent. we keep that phone just in case of emergency. what's the backup if everything is slowed down? >> the nice thing about the system is let's say your entire business internet goes down. so we're all offline here. we'll still ring you on your cell phone. so you have that outside of the internet too. you have a pscn, the traditional phone system, as a backup. >> most of the voice technology that we've seen over the last few years or i should say

communications technology are actually bad for the traditional carriers. what's your relationship with the carriers and what's the future of the carrier in your view? >> well, that was one of the motivations of grand central. the traditional carriers have been monopolies in the past, haven't innovated on the feature side. like when was the last carrier feature, call waiting? you know, caller i.d.? not a lot of innovation, right? so we work with some air carriers to get wholesale things like numbers and terminations and stuff like that, but once you have those raw materials you can do thinking. >> craig walker, ceo of dial pad. >> thanks for having me.

welcome back to "press: here." i'm scott mcgrew with ari levy, mark new of cctv. this echo, this new chinese

company, you were at the launch of this the other day. it was phenomenal. crazy event. >> i saw them about year ago when they first kind of came to silicon valley, introducing their phones. at that time everything from their microphones were not working in the press conference. when we went to this event -- >> fog machine. >> the burritos, everybody was saying hello to you, directing you much better than -- >> it's almost as if, and a very chinese company, almost as if they were watching videos of are project launches and saying let's do that but at 110%. somebody said it steamed like it was a tryout for the hbo show "silicon valley." >> maybe it's all going on the way it's supposed to. >> they hearing aid their own character, ceo and founder, a charismatic guy, he runs out on the stage, and they ear supposed to present their electric vehicle. and they do not have it. he went on far minute and we weren't sure whether this was a

staged event or not. >> that was the audition for "silicon valley." >> we know a car is coming and he explains it's not coming. we think you got it. but it never actually came. >> what blows everybody away is how many products they're trying to release. >> bias cannibicycles, vr, phon seven-foot television. >> taking on all the big markets. he mentioned the chinese netflix weather they the disney, the amazon, and he said they're all of them together, basically. >> i'm glad we had a chance to talk about this because i had the exact same impression. mark new from cctv and ari levy from cnbc, thanks for being with us. thanks for to my guest, craig walker from dial pad. and former cisco futurist and ceo of stringify dave e vance talk about the new home assistants like amazon echo.

and blake shults. all interviews are available on itunes and press here tv. i'm scott mcgrew. thanks for making us part of your sunday morning. number one

show, sunday night football. only on nbc. nbc sports, presents the pantene isu grand prix of figure skating. today, it's progressive's skate america. chicago is always a great city to visit, but never more than this weekend. last night on the north side, the cubs wrapped up a spot in the world series for the first time since 1945 and it's been absolute bedlam since. it's a city that never went to bed. the celebration continues.