The Silver Group, Inc.

The Silver Group expands hotel portfolio with Raccoon Ventures, LLC through the acquisition of http://www.fortmyers.net

2008-05-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

Been a long time since I've posted a blog entry.

Raccoon Ventures, LLC has expanded its hotel portfolio with the acquisition of http://www.fortmyers.net, a hotel and resort guide to the Fort Myers (Ft. Myers) area. Including details on baseball Spring Training camps, tips on shelling, and more.

Visit Fort Myers Today

=====

Fort Myers, located on the Gulf Coast of Florida, is a popular vacation spot for Floridians as well as visitors. In the early 1900s Thomas Edison moved to the area to work on his famous inventions. His estate, along with friend Henry Ford's, is now a major attraction in Fort Myers, in addition to the sand and surf.

The city's offerings vary from museums and educational attractions along McGregor Boulevard (also home to Edison's estate) to the entertainment and nightlife hub of downtown Fort Myers. Outlying like spokes on a wheel are more than 100 islands, including resort spots Sanibel and Captiva. These islands are known for their outstanding fishing, shelling and beachfront resorts. Other islands include Punta Gorda, Bonita Springs and Estero Island.

Two Major League Baseball teams, the Boston Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins, make their spring training homes in Fort Myers. Ft. Myers has been the spring-training home of the Minnesota Twins since 1990 while the Red Sox have been coming here since 1993. Both stadiums seat about 7,000 people and provide an up-close way for fans to enjoy major league baseball.

It's no wonder Fort Myers recently made Orbitz.com's top 10 list of "fastest-growing beach destinations" in the U.S.

THE SILVER GROUP MERGES WITH NEWLY FORMED HUDSON CROSSING

2007-03-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

THE SILVER GROUP MERGES WITH NEWLY FORMED HUDSON CROSSING

The Silver Group, Inc. announced today that it is now part of the newly formed Hudson Crossing LLC. Hudson Crossing is a new advisory firm devoted to helping business owners improve the performance of their travel, tourism and hospitality assets within the travel industry. Hudson Crossing will deliver a new level of advisory services to the industry as it combines its consultative assets with the unparalleled research and events offerings of PhoCusWright Inc.

Edward D. Silver, president and founder of The Silver Group, Inc., is now a founding partner of Hudson Crossing. According to Silver, The Silver Group’s business will merge completely into the Hudson Crossing practice, and his clients will reap the benefits of the deeper service offering from the newly formed venture.

“I am so pleased to be a part of the Hudson Crossing team,” said Silver. “Most importantly, with this new venture, I will be able to extend to my clients the benefit of the range of expertise and exceptional records of success that the collective team at Hudson Crossing brings to the table.”

Read more about the formation of Hudson Crossing.

Go directly to HUDSON CROSSING’s NEW WEBSITE

To contact Edward D. Silver please visit:

http://www.hudsoncrossing.com/e_silver.html

Or call 212-845-9893 x801

email: ed.silver@hudsoncrossing.com

Q Capital Strategies Taps Silver Group as Virtual CIO

2006-11-28T07:03:00.000-08:00

The Silver Group, Inc. announced today that it has been selected as the technology consulting firm of record for Q Capital Strategies, LLC, a leader in the life settlement industry. With this relationship, The Silver Group, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in technology strategy and planning led by Edward D. Silver, will act as Virtual Chief Information Officer, overseeing Q Capital's technology team and enhancing its business through the use of technology.

You can read the entire release here:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/061128/20061128005016.html?.v=1

We are very proud to be a part of the Q Capital team and believe that this is another example of how the Virtual CIO Model is growing and is a successful way to complement your existing business strategy.

Apologies for lack of posts

2006-11-13T10:40:00.000-08:00

Well -- it has been very busy around here at The Silver Group, Inc. New clients, a new laptop and several trade shows and conferences to attend.

I will try hard to update you all on my transition over to the MAC platform, and will be sure to post entries from the Phocuswright Travel Conference I'm headed to in LA today.

More to come for sure....

-Ed

What do these acquisitions have in common....

2006-10-31T12:30:00.000-08:00

Three acquisitions have occurred this week that I think are worth reviewing:

Jotspot acquired by Google

Travelpost acquired by Sidestep

Reddit acquired by Wired Magazine

All three continue to show the trend towards consumer driven media, and the use of consumers to define what is interesting to them on the internet. It also solidifies Google's path towards online collaboration tools.

For Jotspot the Google acquisition seems a natural fit. With enhanced wiki-type functionality Jotspot allows users to edit, add, and control any type of document online. As described by their own FAQ Jotspot is:

"a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, is the first application wiki company. Founded in 2004 by Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, the company is pioneering do-it-yourself application publishing to enable anyone to create, publish, and share collaborative and personalized wiki applications. "

For Sidestep, adding Travelpost, a site that "specializes in user-generated content, featuring personalized hotel ratings, travel advisory services, and personal travel blogs" allows them to leverage those features as a part of their unique travel search offering. Matching those services up to users needs for information as they plan trips is a smart match.

Lastly, Reddit is one of the most popular of the new user driven news sites, along with digg.com (which may be bought by News Corp) Reddit allows users to pick which stories are most popular.

"Reddit was founded in 2005 by college roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian upon their graduation from the University of Virginia. The service aggregates news stories submitted by users and filters those submissions based on user votes."

All three of these acquisitions continue to solidify the trend of user driven content, and by matching up that content with e-commerce or advertising capabilities you create unique opportunities to commercialize this new trend.

I look forward to seeing how these turn out.

MacBook Pro 15 inch ordered

2006-10-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

Wow -- I just pulled the trigger on my new Mac.

MacBook Pro, 15-inch, 2.33GHz, went with the 200 Gig Hard Drive, 3 Gigs of RAM and the matte screen (glossy looked like it had too much reflection to me).

Now the real fun begins, waiting for it to arrive will be impossible, the interesting question is how hard will it be to convert over to it.

My accountant already warned me that running Quickbooks on it may be difficult, or at least it will be difficult to transition over to it -- we shall see.

Is it here yet??

Zoom an IPOD, cosmetics, or a SONY headset....

2006-10-30T11:21:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen a Zoom Systems automated retail experience in action you don't know what you are missing.

The units themselves are cool to look at, drawing the consumers eye to the unit even before you know what they do. Then when you actually use the touch screen, which a very fast to respond, easy to use, and fun to play with -- you realize that this is going to be a new kind of retail experience for sure. And if you actually buy something, forget it -- it feels like you've won a prize at the carnival the process is so much fun.

Zoom announced last week that they closed a $35M round of Series D investment from some big names.

It was covered here in the San Jose Biz Journal.

While I have no business relation to Zoom one of my clients and partners does and has blogged about it here : MaverickMVP.

All in all I think this is a really interesting company with a unique product and a unique retail experience.

What do you think?

Cooking Recipes

2006-10-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

One of my clients has created a very cool application allowing their readers to search through a database of cooking recipes online.

Check it out here: Gourmet.org/recipes

I like the design, ease of searching, and the simple categorization of the recipes.

Nice work Gourmet Kitchen Team!

** Cooking must be one hot area right now, what with a cooking application coming in 3rd in the "My Dream App" contest and now this new site. I love seeing ways in which technology helps change and grow this ancient art....

Digg is down, do you digg?

2006-10-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

This morning I tried to go through my usual morning routine of checking all the sites and blogs I usually hit each day -- I have a pretty regular routine that I go through these days, although I must admit I've modified it quite a bit over the last 90 days.

One site I hit every day now is digg.com. I track certain keywords via my chosen RSS tool, Google Reader and then can monitor the top 100 digg's every day.

If you haven't spent any time on digg.com you should -- it is an amazing system and concept that allows stories or blogs to rise or fall from its home page based solely on the popularity of the post. While this doesn't in itself sound amazing, the concept is actually quite unique, and I'd argue works well as a way to keep your finger on the pulse of what is important to those online (or at least those on digg).

Some argue, I'm sure, that the stories that make it to the top of digg are only those that are important to uber geeks, those stories that appeal to the most technical of the folks using the Net (notice how often stories about Apple Computer make the top of the page).

But I still think that it represents a valid and unique method for seeing what people find interesting. If you haven't checked it out yet or been there recently head over to digg.com and you can see what I'm talking about.

Denver Talent Pool

2006-10-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for any kind of technology, development, operations, product, or project management talent there is a solid pool of candidates to choose from.

As part of Travelport's recent RIF's there were 130 folks let go in Denver alone, a total of 500 will be cut across the board.

I've spoken to a number of them over the last few days and I have a private list of the best of them including a synopsis of their talents, resumes, and contact details.

Please contact me at ed@thesilvergroupinc.com if you are looking for anyone in the Denver area (or outside that area) and I can assist in coordinating the connections.

The Galileo RIF List

2006-10-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

An amazing list of those who have been cut as part of recent Travelport (formerly Cendant's TDS Division) RIF's was found on a blog called The List.

This is clearly not everyone who was let go, but it is a pretty interesting list.

More to come on this soon....

** Someone asked me what RIF stands for (Mike!) it stands for "Reduction in Force" and is corporate speak for firings.

Buy a PC Now, Upgrade to Windows Vista After Launch

2006-10-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

This announcement was found on an Engadget post, but originally blogged on the Windows Vista Team Blog.

Apple computer should follow this quickly with an inexpensive upgrade path to Leopard, which is due out this Spring.

Not having been a Mac user for long now I don't know how well Apple handles the upgrade paths, but with upcoming upgrades to both Windows and Mac OS's both should offer solid, easy, inexpensive paths for upgrading to these new versions.

Travelport keeps cutting!

2006-10-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

Galileo to cut 500 jobs

The cuts at Travelport (formerly Cendant's Travel Distribution Services division) are large and deep, nearly 20% of all staff will be cut. While we knew this had to be done someday it is amazing to see the amount of talented travel experience they are letting go, especially in the technology areas.

I'm going to work up a list of solid candidates and skills that are available and might be good finds both in Chicago, Denver, and New York.

Contact me if you are looking for people in any of these areas - I'll bet we could find a good fit.

Mac Pro Updates

2006-10-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

Mac Pro Updates

In light of the new MacPro updates I think I am finally going to take the plunge and move from an old DELL laptop to a new MacBook Pro.

I've been on a PC for over 15 years now and I think it is finally time to make the switch back to MAC.

I am an old, old, old MAC user from long ago -- in fact we started our original business Lodging.com using Mac's and running FileMaker Pro databases to store our data. Ah, the good old days.

I'll keep this blog updated as I purchase the new Mac and make the switch. Should be fun.

-Ed

Starting up a blog

2006-10-24T12:58:00.000-07:00

I have started a blog to track what I find interesting online, changes in the travel, technology, capital, or consulting world, or anything else that strikes my fancy.

I will use this forum to make announcements about new clients and upcoming trade shows we will be attending as well as to update you on news with existing clients and partners.

Still working on format of the blog but stay tuned for more changes.

-Ed Silver