has failed. the beast, john cox, will open schools, get our economy roaring. learn about california's nicest, smartest beast at johncox.com this week, new ways to find the best air fare from a guy who knows travel well. the strange world of nfts. people paying millions for what exactly? and behind the scenes with special effects artist making all those shows you're bingeing at home. that's this week on "press:here." good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. i used to travel all the time and i'm looking forward to getting back to it. it doesn't have to be fancy, just a quick trip to denver to

see friends over the weekend is enjoyable to me. i love going to the airport. and the way i would schedule those trips was through a website and an app called hip monk. i think i recommend it on television quite often. hip monk was purchased by a big corporation that shut it down so i've been settling for less lately. and then i got the word that the fellow who had created hip monk had created yet another travel app. and i wanted to hear about it. adam goldstein is creator of hip monk and now flight penguin. so let's start with the obvious. hip munk but the logo was a chipmunk and now a penguin. what's with the cute animals? >> we try to relate travel to fun. we try to make it all easy, smiles, in one place. >> you do that by creating sort

be delayed. bar that shows this it's very visual. >> most travel sights, they show you the first option that's the cheapest one even if it has three layovers in the middle of the night, red eye or whatever. how long is the flight going to take, what time of day is it, are there layovers and how long are they. it's all this visual presentation. >> you can present that the flight leaves at 7:30 in the morning by putting 7-3-0, but i know it's going to be a later flight, that kind of thing, which means you can absorb a huge amount of data very quickly. when you sold hip munk, were you able these ideas? give me, if you will, the 30,000-foot levelentrepreneur. >> yeah. >> how limited are you by, no,

no, you sold us that idea. >> i didn't get to take any of the code or technology that we built hip munk. we sold all of that. we had millions of people who used hip munk and loved the visual presentation and the fact that we didn't just sort by the cheapest option. and the technology has really evolved. so we built a website and had to do deals with all these different travel companies to get data. nowadays with flight penguin, we built it as a browser extension. so it actually sits within your web browser and when you run a search, we're able to do the exact search you were to do if you went to the airline and travel agency sites. it's live prices, same exact prices you can see on this website. no more i see a price on kayak but when i click, it's changed. we're doing it from your web browser so it's all up-to-date.

>> what's been back and forth with all administrations is what is the price of my flight, right? >> yes. >> are we including everything or is there an airport fee or something that gets hidden in there? i presume you're giving me the final price there. >> yes. we're giving you the final price and even doing better than tha between airlines and travel sites and often the way these deals work, and i know this because i did some of these deals. often the way it works, the airline will say hey, we'll pay you a little bit extra if you agree to only show our price for our flights. so maybe you know there's a lower price available on some other sites, but if you agree not to show that, then we'll pay you more. it creates this real dilemma where if the company wants to make money, they have to hide flights from their users and all the major travel sites have engaged in some form or another of this backroom deal. with flight penguin, we said we're not going to do that. itonth

to use the service. in exchange we're not taking a penny from anyone else. we're deals. we're showing you the lowest flights. >> you can't speak to the company that bought hip munk and their motivations but as a consumer it's extremely frustrating to me when i find something i really enjoy -- and i'll give you another example. there was an app called detour. it was gps guided and professional prerecorded tour guides would take you around the city and tell you, take a left at the next stop light. now look up at the third window. and it was fascinating. it was invented by the guy who created groupon and then i think bose bought it and it was gone. i don't know what bose wanted with it, but it doesn't matter, because it's gone. it seems like that happens fairly often. big corporations buying little things and then never following up on it. >> yeah, it's true. you know, i see this myself,

because i invest in startups as well. most acquisitions fail. that's what the statistics show. most companies, when they buy another company, they think it will work out great but it doesn't. whether the people in charge turnover or the company has important people quit, or the product changes, it's very difficult to predict. i simply didn't sell hip munk thinking they would shut it down. i thought we were going to build a future. and actually for a while we did. then i left and they decided they didn't want to keep it up any more. that's why we did flight penguin. >> whoever is in charge on the ip on detour, please bring back detour. it was absolutely awesome. let me talk a little bit about travel in general. what are you predicting as far as the return to -- will there be a return to prepandemic levels? and how soon? >> yeah. actually, it's already happening. if you look at the data the airlines are reporting, the number of bookings for out into the future, summer, fall and so

on, are completely consistent with what they had before covid. there's some twists to this. first, people aren't traveling as much yet. so they might cancel theirs though they're planning to travel, just as they did before covid. the second big difference is that it's overwhelmingly people traveling for leisure and for fun and to visit family, not traveling for work. and i think there's a lot of good debate happening in the travel industry right now about whether there will be a return to business travel the way it used to be. >> adam goldstein with flight penguin. i wish you luck on your travel delay, and i wish you luck going through laguardia. the best of luck. it can be an adventure, as we've both seen. thank you for joining us this morning. "press:here" will be right back.

this isn't our first flip. and sure, some renovations can require a bit of compromis. but, there's no settling here. at floor & decor, she gets to fulfill her vision while i get in-stock products at budget-friendly prices. all in one trip. plus, we get the installation materials we need to get it done right and right on time. it's a win-win. now that's shopping like a pro. explore floor & decor, in person or online at flooranddecor.com.

recently the founder of twitter just sold his first tweet. just setting up my twttr, it reads. they used to spell it without an "e." someone paid millions. as for the how, let's bring in matthew lamerl.

he knows a great deal about the block chain and what are called nfts or nonf fungible tokens. convince me this is not just magical beans. how does that have any value? >> yeah. so, scott, the easiest way to begin the conversation is to start with the past. you may buy and trade baseball cards. you may collect modern art. some of those books behind you right now may be first additions and most people in the world don't think any of those things have any value. most people in the world do not think baseball cards have any value. they do not think those books on your book shelf are worth a lot and they think modern art is worth a collectibles work is

out of 8people, a few hundred thousand get together and say, we love baseball cards and we want to buy and trade them, and suddenly they're valuable. if you remember that thought, that it doesn't take everyone in the world. it just takes a few like-minded people to make a market, to establish a price, and to create value, then all that's happening is that some people are agreeing that the ownership of jack dorsey's original tweet in a limited edition version is worth a lot. >> it only takes two people, right? the seller and the buyer to agree there's some value to a thing. >> we normally need two buyers, because you need competition to drive up the price. if you only ever had one buyer, it wouldn't be a high price. >> so, matthew, i hadn't thought of it that way. you're absolutely right.

there are some things, a stripe of red paint across a canvas in which somebody says, my god, i'll pay $100 million and the s me a little bit is when you sell that at sotheby's, christy's or whatnot, they take it down the wall and wrap it up and you take it with you, because it's a physical item. >> yes. >> in the case of most nfts, it's not physical, it's tangible and it's infinitely copyable. >> scott, let's again talk about something we understand. you may own some ibm stock. that stock has been turned into a digital stock certificate. your broker, trading screen. maybeameritrade

or schwab account. you trust that amazon only issues the number of share certificates they said they did. you believe that it's scarce and then you and millions of other people trade amazon. it's an electronic, nonfunigible certificate. so these new words, nonfungible token, are confusing people. you agree it's valuable, as does everyone else, and it's called amazon shares. just take exactly the same idea and say it's now a jack dorsey tweet, but the block chain is the basis of the trust. and you can see not only that there's only one version minted, but you know uniquely which

version, which one you're holding. so, you're correct. i can take that baseball card from topps, i can get a chinese factory to print another million copies of that baseball card, but you and i know they're fake. they're pirated. >> it's not exactly the same technology. >> with the copyrighted baseball card, it can be really, really hard to figure out which is the real one and which is the fake one. in a digital world, we can create digital proof of which is the authentic real one and which one is a fake. and that's the difference. >> did we need the block chain in the sense that -- again i'm going to use the sotheby's or christie's example.

presumably they're giving me something that says this used to bond to matthew le merle but he sold it to scott mcgrew. >> yes. >> i don't think anyone doubted or questioned a stamped certificate from christie's or whatnot saying no, no, no, i own this. >> right. it turns out that fakery is large in fine art, too. so you trust that christie's and sotheby's experts know which is an authentic old master. but it turns out there are fake old masters, too. so the breakthrough is that when we have technology, it's called block chain. think of it as a database. we can append an item, we have

more trust around the han we typically have today. there is a last mark i physical. how are we going to attach the proof that connects to the block chain to the physical item. in a digital item, that's very easy. we can digitally attach the seal of approval to the digital item and we can have it on the database. i use the share certificate example because i think everyone our age -- you're at my age, scott. we're all familiar with this. we buy amazon shares every day. we trust that there's only the number that amazon say there are. and we then make a market in them and they have value. but it's all digital. it's a digital share certificate. so now we can have tokens. think of itappends, say,

to a baseball card. the underlying asset is the physical baseball card. the leak you and i struggle with, because we're not digital natives, is the idea that not only is the certificate digital, the proof of authenticity, but the item is digital. >> do you think that a few years from now, we will look back at nfts and say oh, this was only the beginning, or we will look back at it and kind of roll our eyes and say, well, that was a total 2021 thing? >> no. listen, first thing is we won't call them nfts. we don't call them nonfungible canvas or nonfungible baseball card. >> true. >> in just the same way, we will not be calling these nfts in the future. we don't call them by the technology. we call them by what they are. and what they are are digital assets. and all of the world's assets and all of the world's monies

will be digital in the future. that's an inevitability. the chinese get that, the u.s. is starting to get that. we will have digital dollars, digital real estate and digital funds. it makes no sense that most real estate is paper based in a digital world. we will have digital real estate. you and i will buy houses electronically in seconds, not in 60 days, which is what it takes to get all the papers signed. >> so long as the house itself is a physical object. matthew lemerle, you dragged me down the path a little there. fully convinced, i'm not sure, but i appreciate you educating our viewers. matthew le merle is a venture capitalist and author. we appreciate him being here this morning. "press:here" will be right back. - ( phone ringing ) - big button, and volume-enhanced phones.

get details on this state program. visit right now or call during business hours. [ sfx: bzzz bzzz bzzz ] [ sfx: ping ping beep beep bloop bloop ] [ sfx: honk ] [ sfx: pop pop pop pop ] [ sfx: pop ping bloop pop ping bloop ] the day can wait. enter the golden state with real california dairy.

now california phones offers free devices and accessories for your mobile phone. like this device to increase volume on your cell phone. - ( phone ringing ) - get details on this state program visit right now or call during business hours. welcome back to "press:here." ibm is international business machines. that's what they make. we are a company that broadcasts nationally so we are the national broadcasting company, nbc. my next guest is from a company called marz with a z.

m-a-r-z, which stands for monsters, aliens, robots and zombies. i thought it would be interesting to him because there's so many tv channels demanding so many shows and two, special effects can be done from home. i haven't actually seen wandavision. that's not all that surprising in that you've probably not seen some of the shows that i watch because there's so many of them, it really is the golden age of television. >> it is. it's far out-reached our expectations when we launched marz in 2018. it absolutely equals major television and we're happy to be part of it. >> the computers that are

powerful enough at home now that specialize work on home computers can be done on special effects, right? with things that are more or less off the shelf. >> incredible remote capabilities. for wanda vision, we had three days to go remote and it was two weeks into the project. it was a scary time but also forced us really to learn how to do things efficiently in a remote setting and the benefits of that were huge. we were not only able to figure it out but it opened up in terms of talent and being able to. >> i'm at home. the person changing the camera angles is working from another place, the person add in the video of wanda vision is working at another place.

you're in an entirely different country. i think there are a lot of opportunities here that we didn't know that we had. >> covid forced the industry to change. again i think it's beneficial. >> that does make collaboration a little more difficult, particularly with time zones. the special effects artist sort of a lone wolf anyway? obviously has to work with the director and what does the director want. but is it sort of an inherently work by yourself sort of talent? >> yes and no. each individual artist needs to hold their own weight. it is, in fact, a very collaborative process. it's manufacturing but it's manufacturing a very complex product. and a subjective product, art work at the end of the day. that was one of the areas that was initially challenging, when you're at the studio, people can talk all day. when you start to go remote, those things become more challenging. it's super collaborative. not only do you have to be

communicative internally but at the end of the day you have to impress the director and show runner. that's a challenge into itself. when you bring marvel into the equation, it put bris in another challenge. >> no doubt. a young woman is pushing away at the deputies and, of course, as they're shooting, the deputies sort of jump back as if something has happened. a special effects person has to come in later and do that. on top of the collaboration, you've got to do one thing very specifically to begin with and one thing very specifically later as well. >> absolutely. and that can sometimes be challenging. there's a thing in our industry called fix it and post. >> in our industry, too. >> there you go. we definitely have situations where things are shot not in the way we anticipated and there's

only so many things you can do. watchman was one where we have to come up with a really unique solution to make that show work. we actually had the actor rigged up, had cameras on the front of everyone knows as looking glass. that required tons of collaboration with production. >> the visual effects, are costs coming down? >> they are. they are coming down it is important for the industry to continue to pursue technology to make sure that trend continues. quite frankly, the reason we were so excited by going after exclusively television is that this is a new set of challenges that have never really been seen before. there's been a huge paradigmcat.

the quality is on par at this point. the schedule and, in many cases the budgets haven't opened up. at marz, we're passionate for that exact thing. how can we be a studio that not only delivers feature film quality but is able to consistently do so on television timeline, on television projects? and for us, the x factor to get you there is going to come from technology. and so we make heavy investments in technology for that exact reason. we're particularly bullish on ai and have a few things we're doing in self mode right now for that. absolutely the costs are coming down and that's helping open up a lot more avenues for ambitious story telling. >> i realize you're in stealth mode. but that interests any reporter when you say that. with ai, what would ai do? would it be able to some day -- the director says i want a monster with two heads that's six-feet tall and ai would

create it? or would it speed the artist's ability to make that monster? >> what we're seeing right now, and we think this is the best way to leverage ai, and i think this is actually the case in many industries where originally there was a fear that ai was going to come and do your job for you. and i think what we're seeing cross industry, across tech is the best use cases for ai is when ai helps to assist the human. the most beneficial way to leverage it is to allow us to scale the artist's efforts. you still have the artist helping to establish that high bar creative but then ai can come in and do the heavy lifting. we think it will be necessary across the board. >> and make some monsters, aliens and robots along the way. >> yep. >> matt m marz, the company not the planet.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guests, and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. and to the mothers out there, a very

damian trujillo: hello and welcome to, "comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo and today, they're back, the mexican american vintners association, or mava, on your, "comunidad del valle." ♪♪♪ damian: and we begin today with your health. martha zambrano is with momentum for health. she's with us here on, "comunidad del valle." martha, welcome to the show. martha zambrano: thank you, damian. damian: thank you for being here. tell us about momentum for health. and adult behavioral soomentum for health is one of the largestnh health services in santa clara county.