Hilton Hotels just launched an iPhone app that lets customers book and modify reservations at over 520 hotels in 76 countries.

Offered gratis on iTunes, the Hilton Worldwide app could come in handy for stranded travelers thanks to a feature that lets you find hotels near you, by address or airport, and gives you directions from your current location.

The hotels at hand also include all of those in the Hilton network — another 3,000 + including the Doubletree, Embassy Suites and Home2 suites chains.

The app will also let you choose bed and pillow type — plus if you don’t think you’ll have the strength to make a request once you get in, you can put your order for room service in via iPhone, too.

Sounds good, but it still has to compete with Priceline.com’s app (which boasts William Shatner as the icon) already iTunes’ fifth-most-downloaded free app after launching a week ago.

What do you think, handy or meh?

Via USA Today

Remember the hoopla over Boston’s giant iPod billboard we reported on back in October? Questions arose whether a mayor’s aide had helped a business group obtain permission to erect the ad, despite the objections of the state’s outdoor advertising board and the mayor’s own historic reluctance for such things? The billboard was quietly removed, replaced by a public service mural.

Key to the decision was the Massachusetts Outdoor Advertising Board “deemed [the billboard] illegal because it advertised a product the storage business didn’t sell,” according to the Boston Herald. The ad was located on the side of a self-storage building that along with packing tape and locks, sold iTunes gift cards.

The billboard’s removal comes less than a half-year after the property owner and others paid $110,000 to obtain a one-year extension on a city permit.

In 2008 Apple opened its flagship Boston store.

[Via Boston Herald and 9to5Mac]

From now on, all Hackintoshes may be stuck at 10.6.1.

Hackintosh hackers have confirmed that 10.6.2 drops support for Intel’s Atom chips.

Writes leading hacker StelaRolo:

“The netbook forums are now blowing up with problems of 10.6.2 instant rebooting their Atom based netbooks. My sources tell me that everytime a netbook user installs 10.6.2 an Apple employee gets their wings.”

What’s this mean? StelaRolo says that a hacked kernel will likely appear, but Apple is clerly nuking the Hackintosh market.

In addition, Apple will not likely release any future hardware based on Intel’s Atom platform. Instead, Apple will concentrate on ARM-based hardware, the same platform as the iPhone. That includes the upcoming tablet.

As Seth Weintraub writes on Computerworld.com:

“Apple bought a processor-building company called PA Semi two years ago, in order to build chips for iPhones, said Steve Jobs. The chips that this new Apple division make will likely be the chips that power Apple’s tablet and even future laptops.”

We’ve seen this before: A company that’s built a reputation offering stuff to the budget-minded shopper suddenly does an about face and starts wooing the uptown crowd. Sometimes it works brilliantly; often it’s a misfire.

Earlier this year, it was iHome’s turn at bat. The company, well-known for their cleanly simple, inexpensive line of iPod/iPhone accessories, stepped in a bold new direction with the release of their flagship iP1 iPod dock, a product that costs double their previously most-expensive item.

Hit the jump to find out if iHome struck out or hit a home run with the iP1.

We start another week with more deals on MacBook Pro laptops. This time we feature a 2.26GHz 13-inch machine from the Apple Store, starting at $999. Also available: 2.53GHz and 2.66GHz MacBook Pro laptops with prices ranging from $1,299 to $1,949. You can also get a $10 extra gift card when you bundle a $25 iTunes gift card along with a $25 Best Buy card. We round out the top trio with a 3-in-1 FM transmitter for the iPod or iPhone.

For details on these and other bargains (including a new round of App Store freebies), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Convert your mild-mannered Mac Pro into a hard drive speed demon.  Stuff it with drives fast enough to work with full-quality, uncompressed video. Get more than 300 MB/s on your internal drives! It’s so easy even I can do it!

I’ve been working in video production for the last 20+ years. When you’re working with video you need as much storage space as you can afford. You need a badass computer with big fat hard drives that scream.

You think you might wanna Hot Rod your Mac Pro?  This easy, step-by-step guide will show you how.

Tim Langdell‘s back, and this time he’s mad(der than a bag of spanners). Today, Nalin Sharma’s Killer Edge Racing is the victim. The short version: like with Mobigame’s Edge, Langdell claims Nalin’s game is riffing off Edge’s ‘famous’ marks; additionally, Pocket Gamer reports that Langdell’s moved to register Killer Edge Racing and Killer Edge Racers, despite Killer Edge having its roots back in 2005, way before Edge Games claimed to be working on a racing game of its own. (It’s since released Racers—and the word ‘released’ is used here in its loosest possible sense—see ChaosEdge for the full story. But given that Racers is a redressed PC game from a liquidated company and is ‘released’ on home-burned DVDR and is not on iPhone, there’s no possibility of confusion.)

Of course, Apple will continue to hide behind the DMCA in these cases, saying it’s doing what it’s doing for legal reasons. But as this case and the one regarding StoneLoops! of Jurassica show, Apple’s going to start looking foolish if it doesn’t implement some kind of robust background check and a longer process of investigation/arbitration/settlement prior to yanking a game. A dispute policy is utterly essential, but the one currently in place is clearly open to abuse.

Here’s hoping Sharma manages to get his game back on the App Store without compromising the brand he’s been using for five years, and that EA’s case with Langdell next year reaches a conclusion that satisfies the indie developers regularly under fire from his trolling actions (oh, and the 15-year-old girls on DeviantArt he steals artwork from to advertise his games that don’t actually exist).

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was named “CEO of the Decade” by Fortune Magazine. The magazine calls the 2000s “the decade of Steve.”

Despite surviving a very public death watch, being tossed out of his own company in the 1980s and what Fortune calls “his own often unpleasant demeanor,” Jobs “has transformed American business.”

Apple’s come-back under Jobs spans 2000, when the company was worth $5 billion through today’s $170 billion valuation, edging out even the mega-bucks of Internet giant Google. In August, Apple reported having $31.1 billion in cash, a record for a technology company. Over that period, the Cupertino, Calif. company has become involved in music, videos and cell phones.

The mystery object in Monday’s contest is a Quadra 700. (Yes, the image was flipped in an effort to make it a slightly more challenging).

Winner named after the jump.

Virgin’s new Flying Without Fear app — an interactive guide to easing panic — left us with a few questions that we got answered by Mickey Beyer-Clausen, who co-developed the app for Mental Workout.

CoM: Can you use the app during take off and landing?

MBC: Unfortunately, passengers cannot use any electronic device – including the iPhone in airplane mode – during take-off and landing but the app is developed to prepare users for flight whereby making the brief “no electronics” period at the beginning and end of the flight more manageable.

The panic button is intended to be used during the flight when turbulence is encountered or other events occur which make the user uncomfortable.