Tag: Technology
View All TagsChicago hotels / Michigan Avenue / Mag Mile / Video / technology / art / high-tech / people watching / → All Tags
What's That Behind the Desk at the InterContinental Chicago?
Earlier this week we spotted this enormous, curious screen of SOMETHING while visiting that historic bastion of Michigan Avenue hotels, the InterContinental Chicago. What exactly was it that we were watching behind the reception desk? Some new kind of window, a high-tech art installation, a movie?
Transfixed – as we imagine most every guest now feels when checking in at the InterCon – we soon discovered it was none of the above, but rather a view out onto Michigan Avenue via a brand-new live video feed.
Installed only days ago (and with hardly enough fanfare!), the tall screen spans nearly the entire length of the desk – maybe five by fifteen feet in dimension. Giant views of the Mag Mile looking north from the east side of the street captured all walks of Chicago – business peeps, tourists, locals, nose pickers, quarreling couples, you name it. We stood there taking it all in, voyeurs onto the city’s most famous strip. And, damn, it made for some spectacular people watching.
Paris Hotels / Tech Hotels / Technology / Hotel News / Microsoft / → All Tags
Pocket Protectors in Paris: Novotel and Microsoft Team Up for a Techie-Tastic Room
If you're into World of Warcraft and LAN parties, make note of what may be the world's most techie-tastic hotel room. Located miles away from the Valley (that's Silicon, not mall world), Paris' Novotel Vaugirard-Montparnasse has teamed with Microsoft to unveil a room kitted out with electronic perks such as a SENSORIT digital mirror, a multitasking piece of decor that allows guests to primp as they simultaneously check news.
Yapta / Facebook / Hotel Deals / Technology / Bad Ideas / → All Tags
Would You Post Your Latest Hotel Deal to Facebook? Yapta Hopes You Will
Apparently someone at Yapta heard that Orbitz has a Facebook application and, over the strong advice of Hotelchatter sister site Jaunted, decided that they had to have a Facebook presence too.
The Yapta tool, like the Orbitz application, allows you to grab your travel deals on their site and then push them to your Facebook stream. We're frustrated by this kind of social media nonsense for the same reason we remain skeptical of hotel iPhone applications: nobody uses those things for that.
Your average traveler books flight or hotel deals for themselves and their families. Occasionally - occasionally - they'll be traveling with a friend and they'll swap confirmation emails so everyone's on the same page. But it's difficult to imagine a context where people would share financial and travel details with their network. (Unless you are want people to know what you consider to be too much for a hotel room.) There are very real privacy concerns since most people's networks are littered with people they met at parties, college classmates they never got around to unfriending, and the like.
