hotels

Hotelicopter, the April Fools' Day joke about a helicopter that doubled as a hotel, turned out to be fake. A week later though, the same company that successfully played the joke on most of the Internet has launched a real product with the same name.

Hotelicopter the travel search engine is not nearly as exciting a concept as a converted Soviet chopper-turned-air hotel, but it does an admirable job at scouring the Web to find you deals on hotel bookings. It searches and aggregates the results from more than 30 different hotel deals sites like Priceline, Hotels.com, and Booking.… Read more

Looking at pictures of the Snow Hotel in Kemi, Finland, sent chills down my wimpy California spine. The Web site promises that the invigorating 41-degree guest rooms will give you sweet dreams and a memorable sleeping experience. A night of chattering teeth and blue lips does indeed sound memorable, though not the kind of sunny vacation memories I personally long for.

Nonetheless, some people (those, say, who feel a strong kinship to the Snow Queen in "Chronicles of Narnia") will undoubtedly enjoy the novelty and trendiness of igloo-like accommodations made entirely of snow.

The hotel has single, double, … Read more

Another day, another data breach.

If you bought something at a Best Buy store in West Palm Beach, Fla., late last year, or stayed at a Wyndham hotel in Florida last summer, or use a U.S. government travel Web site you might want to check your credit card statements closely.

Best Buy warned this week that 4,000 customers of a store in West Palm Beach may have had their credit card information stolen when they made their purchases.

The chain terminated the employment of a worker at the store after learning that a skimming device was used to … Read more

Major props to Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 for ditching the plane in the Hudson River after a double-engine failure and flying over the George Washington Bridge. Jeff Bakalar remains frightened for his life by flying.

In addition, the Watchmen movie debacle is settled between Warner Bros. and Fox, giving Justin Yu an early birthday present. Speaking of which, Wilson Tang will be joining the soon-to-be 25-year-old Mr. Yu for an Asian karaoke lovefest. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Rickrolls the Interwebs about a year and a half way too late, but … Read more

Plenty of iPods at the iHotel California: I believe that's how The Eagles would sing their famous song if they composed it today.

The California hotel in question is the Malibu Beach Inn--quite possibly the first hotel in the state, if not the world, to implement an iPhone/iPhone-based system of hotel management.

The system is developed by Runtriz, a software firm based in Hollywood. Its product, called "Hotel Evolution," is an application designed for the iPhone and the iPod Touch that helps bring hotels up to technological speed and even a little further.

When checking … Read more

During a recent trip to Barcelona I opted to stay at a NH Hotel. Little did I know in choosing this safe, clean, and slightly hip business-oriented chain, my bias toward open source was showing through. As it turns out, NH Hoteles runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux, along with JBoss solutions. Funny, that.

However, much as I like to think that I'm supporting open source in my sleep, I find the reasons for NH Hoteles choice of open-source Red Hat more enlightening:

"After implementing Red Hat solutions, we benefited from a reliable technology infrastructure that was fault-tolerant, robust, … Read more

If you're going to be staying at the Renaissance New York Hotel Times Square on business, you might need to have someone come get you when it's time to leave for your meetings.

That's because the hotel, and several others in the Marriott chain, will now be featuring Nintendo Wiis in their rooms, along with a selection of 20 games. Mass meeting delinquency is sure to follow.

According to a release from Nintendo on Tuesday, the Times Square hotel, along with Marriotts in five cities around the country, are going to begin stocking hotel rooms, or the … Read more

If you're looking to find a place to crash in a foreign city and have tried solutions like Craigslist or AirBed & Breakfast, you've got to check out Roomorama. It's a peer-to-peer rental community that lets visitors find a cheap, low-key place to stay, and gives renters with some extra space a chance to make some cash.

Like AirBed & Breakfast, people with some extra space can put their place up on the market. If someone's coming into town during the dates you set as being available, they'll have the option to book it. Once … Read more

The BBC reports that a Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing 4,000 euros' (about $5,800) worth of virtual furniture from "rooms" in the social-networking site Habbo Hotel.

Five 15-year-olds have also been questioned by the police in connection to this incident. The six teens are suspected of moving the stolen furniture into their own Habbo rooms.

The lines between "virtual" and "reality" continue to blur. At first glance, the idea of stealing virtual furniture seems ludicrous. But, the furniture was paid for with real money. A Habbo Hotel spokesman told the BBC that "the accused lured victims into handing over their Habbo passwords by creating fake Habbo Web sites." So there is also a phishing fraud involved.… Read more