hotel

It doesn't take long to see that the new 250-room Legoland Hotel in Carlsbad, Calif., is a special place for fans of the iconic building toy. As visitors drive up to the colorful entrance, a Lego tower greets them with an impressive facade of giant minifigures and a 400,000-piece smoke-breathing dragon.

Once inside, the Lego experience multiplies as nearly every foot of the hotel contains brick-themed decor. Guests can choose from three types of themed rooms, including pirate, adventure, and kingdom styles. It's a bricktravaganza. … Read more

Hotels can be a hassle. You have to read reviews, check booking sites, arrange transportation, and sometimes deal with noisy neighbors. If you got a Hotello instead, you could just pop open your hotel room wherever you felt like it and settle in for some quality work or nap time.

Hotello is a concept portable hotel room and working space created by architect Antonio Scarponi and artist Robert de Luca for Swiss design group Das Konzept. The whole thing packs down into a red trunk with wheels on the bottom, so you could conceivably carry it with you, though it would have to go into checked baggage on a plane, and you'd probably have to cough up a lot of extra luggage fees.… Read more

A hotel near Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., is now using some of the iPhone and iPad maker's home entertainment technology in its rooms.

Starwood Hotels' Aloft Hotel has put an Apple TV in all 123 of its rooms, the company said today.

Of note, the hotel is located on the same block as one of Apple's external campus buildings, and just two blocks from its headquarters on Infinite Loop.

"Guests can choose among thousands of movies and TV shows from iTunes, connect to Netflix for films, Hulu for television shows, MLB.com for sports, and … Read more

Some like it cold.

It's not everyone's idea of comfort, but sitting in a cool hotel room -- especially when it's hot outside -- can offer a certain pleasure. At least for me.

It's a pleasure that a certain group of people want to deny me. They're called hotel owners.

Hotel owners, it seems, are rather fonder of making a cool profit.

It's bad enough when the room has no windows you can open. However, an ever-increasing trend is for hotels to restrict how cold you can make your room temperature.

You click furiously … Read more

A known hack of a popular hotel keycard reader was allegedly employed in the burglary of a woman's hotel room in Texas.

The hack, which was detailed at a security conference in July, was allegedly used in September to break in to the Houston Hyatt hotel room of Janet Wolf, a Dell IT services consultant, who reported the theft of her laptop. Lacking any sign the lock had been picked, suspicion immediately fell upon the maid service. However, hotel management soon determined that none of the maids' keys had been used to open the room at the time of … Read more

We've all been there: You excitedly start to plan a vacation to some place you've never been, but once you get into the thick of it, you realize that figuring out what to do, let alone making bookings for everything from restaurants to museums to hotels to tours, is exhausting business.

That's the problem that Peek.com, a San Francisco startup that launched today, is trying to solve. Aiming to be a traveler's one-stop shop for everything from identifying what to do when on the road to booking to special recommendations for how to spend a &… Read more

If I were a kid, I would probably have the date May 7, 2013 memorized like a video game cheat code. That's when the Legoland hotel in San Diego opens its brick-adorned doors, ushering in the first Lego-themed auberge on the continent.

Similar to the already-running Legoland hotel in Windsor, U.K., the entire façade and interior of the hotel features Lego elements from head to toe. Upon arriving, kids will surely gasp at a Lego dragon near the entrance that emits real smoke when irritated. Another example of Lego flair can be found in the lobby, where 6,000 Lego minifigures stand neatly lined up behind the concierge desk. … Read more

You may not be as safe in your locked hotel room as you think.

Keycard door locks from Onity -- used in more than 4 million hotel rooms around the world -- are susceptible to vulnerabilities that could lead to a security bypass, according to Cody Brocious, a 24-year-old Mozilla developer and security researcher. Brocious, who is expected to present his findings at the Black Hat security conference tomorrow, showed Forbes how he is able to open hotel doors with a gadget he built with materials costing less than $50.

Brocious' device spoofs a portable programming device used to control … Read more

Monday's top stories are about Windows, Twitter, iPhones, and flying pigs. You know, the usual tech talk:

Monday was said to be an "Internet Doomsday." Anyone infected with DNSChanger malware would lose access to the Internet. But turns out, it wasn't all that dramatic. Internet service providers like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon are stepping in and helping anyone still bit by the server-enslaving bug. If you have a friend that needs a fix, here's how to administer the cure.

Microsoft announced that Windows 8 will be available at the end of October. If … Read more