Switch on a hotel TV, and you’ll likely run into its paywall very quickly. You probably don’t want to view any of the hotel’s stupid pay channels, but maybe you do want to hook up your iPad and watch some of the shows you brought along with you.

You’re typically still out of luck, though. These locked-up TVs won’t let you access their HDMI ports. Nor will they let you connect via AirPlay, if they even support Apple’s streaming protocol. However, there’s an absurdly easy way to disable all this dumb “security” and watch video from your iPad or iPhone to a hotel TV.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts has begun a pilot program in two of its major hotel locations in Manhattan and Silicon Valley, which does away with keycards altogether by allowing guests to enter their rooms using just their smartphones.

Starwood Hotels recently opened Aloft Cupertino, a slick hotel that is located two blocks away from Apple’s famous One Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino, California. Given its close proximity to Apple itself, it only makes sense for Aloft to put Apple products into its rooms.

Unlike the crappy cable boxes that are usually in hotels, Aloft has installed an Apple TV in each of its 123 rooms with full access to all of the set-top box’s features, including AirPlay.

This Cult of Mac Deal sounds great…literally!

The AFS1 Portable Bluetootk Speaker offers great sound – wherever and whenever you want it. You can easily sync this powerful little speaker to your tablet, phone, computer, or bluetooth compatible music player to enjoy stereo quality tunes anywhere. And for only $39 you’re gettinga deal that sounds great on a whole other level!

Today’s Cult of Mac Deal sounds great…literally!

The AFS1 Portable Bluetootk Speaker offers great sound – wherever and whenever you want it. You can easily sync this powerful little speaker to your tablet, phone, computer, or bluetooth compatible music player to enjoy stereo quality tunes anywhere. And for only $39 you’re gettinga deal that sounds great on a whole other level!

You're in a hotel room, and you want to hook up to the in-room Wi-Fi. And guess what? It sucks, just like at every other hotel you ever stayed at. So Instead you dig out your MacBook and hook it up to the hotel's Ethernet cable, and use internet sharing to generate your own wireless network.

Wait… The newest MacBooks Air don't have Ethernet ports. But don't worry: you can pick up the $60 mySpot from Kanex, a little dongle which takes an Ethernet connector and turns its sweet network payload into a wireless cloud, ready for all your iDevices and your non-Ethernet MacBook Air.

The Wall Street Journal seems to think so, reporting that Orbitz points users of its online web travel booking service to different, sometimes more expensive, options when those users use a Mac.

What the heck, Orbitz?

In our mobile and always connected world, packing for a business trip or a vacation includes one inevitable question: what devices should I bring? While we may strive to carry our entire office or home theater with us, there’s always a chance of getting to our destination and discovering we don’t have everything we need (because of trying to travel light or simply forgetting something).

Most major hotels, resorts, and cruise lines (and some airports) offer fully equipped mini-offices known as business centers that can usually provide everything from a copier or fax machine to power cords to printers and even fully equipped desktop computers. One thing that’s becoming more common is to see business centers populated with iMacs rather than Windows PCs – and for good reasons.

Add free hotel Wi-Fi to the list of services Apple’s iPad is making a thing of the past. The bad thing about the iPad being the best-selling gadget on the planet is, paradoxically, that the iPad is the best selling gadget on the planet. Turns out, the iPad sucks up quadruple the amount of wireless bandwidth as a smartphone — and hotels want to start metering your usage.

Bringing your own equipment with you while on the road often requires some planning ahead. If you plan to use an AppleTV while traveling you might want to bring some ethernet cables or a WiFi router along with you:

Since I travel a great deal, I have been wondering if there is a way I can use AppleTV and the hotel’s WiFi network to stream video from my laptop to their television. In looking at the Apple Support Discussions, it appears that a similar question has been raised by those in college dorms.

I realize that this requires a HDMI cord and port on the television. But is there a way that the Mac can then “talk” to the AppleTV?

Thanks, Bill