Here are all the biggest announcements from Apple’s “Glowtime” event.

Apple Intelligence

Apple’s core artificial intelligence offerings are being packaged and billed as Apple Intelligence — first revealed at the company’s developers conference in June.

These features include the ability to search for images in your library by describing them, creating custom emojis, summarizing emails and prioritizing notifications. Apple Intelligence will also upgrade Apple’s virtual assistant Siri to get it to better understand requests and give it some awareness of on-screen actions taking place on the phone, hopefully making it more useful.

What sets Apple apart from what’s being offered by rivals Samsung and Google? It is trying to preserve its longtime commitment to privacy by tailoring its AI so that most of its functions are processed on the device itself instead of at remote data centers. When a task requires a connection to a data center, Apple promises it will be done in a tightly controlled way that ensures no personal data is stored remotely.

Most of Apple’s AI functions will roll out as part of a free software update to iOS 18, the operating system that will power the iPhone 16 rolling out from October through December. U.S. English will be the featured language at launch but an update enabling other languages will come out next year, according to Apple.

iPhone 16 and the camera button

The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max will offer slightly bigger displays and feature variants of the powerful A18 chip, which gives Apple the computing power its devices need to run AI functions.

The iPhone 16 “has been designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up,” CEO Tim Cook said during Monday’s event.

On the other end of the spectrum, the biggest physical change to the iPhone 16 lineup comes in the form of a dedicated camera-control button. The button responds to clicks and gestures, allowing users to quickly snap pictures, preview a shot or start video recording.

The button also allows owners to use something called Visual Intelligence, which will tell the iPhone 16 to automatically search on things you take photos of.

The phones will start shipping Sept. 20. The iPhone 16 will retail for $799, with the Plus model going for $899. The iPhone 16 Pro will cost $999, while the Pro Max will sell for $1,199.

Apple Watch upgrades

The Apple Watch Series 10 features a larger, and brighter, wide-angle OLED display that will allow users to better view the watch at an angle. But Apple focused much of its presentation on the device’s ability to detect signs of sleep apnea.

The new device is also being offered in a titanium finish for the first time, joining a longtime trend in the watch industry of offering a tougher, more lightweight, and perceived higher-quality, alternative to traditional materials.

The Series 10 watch starts at $399 and will be available on Sept. 20.

Airpods lean toward being a listening device

The new AirPods 4 series will come with an upgraded chip for better audio quality, and will feature more active noise cancellation.

If you frequently lose your ear buds, the new AirPods will also play a sound when you locate them through the Find My app.

In a medically focused update to the AirPods Pro 2, Apple said it will upgrade the devices so they can act as an over-the-counter hearing aid. A free software update will provide the upgrade and also include options to help protect hearing and the ability to administer a clinical-grade hearing test.

The AirPod 4 model costs $129, while the version with active noise cancelling will cost $179. They both ship on Sept. 20.

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The impasse between DirecTV and Disney over a new carriage agreement has become more heated as it entered its second week.

DirecTV filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission on Saturday night accusing Disney of negotiating in bad faith.

Disney channels, including ESPN and ABC-owned stations in nine markets, have been off DirecTV since the evening of Sept. 1. That meant DirecTV customers were blacked out from viewing most college football games and the final week of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, including the women’s and men’s finals.

DirecTV has 11.3 million subscribers, according to Leichtman Research Group, making it the nation’s third-largest pay TV provider.

ABC and ESPN will have the “Monday Night Football” opener between the New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers. ABC will also produce and carry a presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on Tuesday in Philadelphia.

ABC-owned stations in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Bay Area; Fresno, California; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; and Raleigh, North Carolina, are off DirecTV.

Besides all ESPN network channels and ABC-owned stations, Disney-branded channels Freeform, FX and National Geographic channel are dark.

DirecTV says in its 10-page complaint that Disney is violating the FCC’s good faith mandates by asking it to waive any legal claims on any anticompetitive actions, including its ongoing packaging and minimum penetration demands.

DirecTV has asked Disney for the option to provide consumers with cheaper and skinnier bundles of programming, instead of bigger bundles that carry programming some viewers might not be interested in watching.

The complaint states: “Along with these anticompetitive demands, Disney has also insisted that DirecTV agree to a ‘clean slate’ provision and a covenant not to sue, both of which are intended to prevent DirecTV from taking legal action regarding Disney’s anticompetitive demands, which would include filing good faith complaints at the Commission. Not three months ago, however, the Media Bureau made clear that such a demand itself constitutes bad faith.”

DirecTV CEO Ray Carpenter said during a conference call with business and media analysts on Tuesday that they would not agree to a new carriage deal with Disney without bundling changes.

“We’re not playing a short-term game,” Carpenter said. “We need something that is going to work for the long-term sustainability of our video customers. The resolve is there.”

Disney has claimed since the blackout began that mutual release of claims is standard practice after licensing agreements are negotiated and agreed upon by the parties. It has also had one with DirecTV under its past renewals.

A Disney spokesperson said: “We continue to negotiate with DirecTV to restore access to our content as quickly as possible. We urge DirecTV to stop creating diversions and instead prioritize their customers by finalizing a deal that would allow their subscribers to watch our strong upcoming lineup of sports, news and entertainment programming, starting with the return of Monday Night Football.”

Last year, Disney and Charter Spectrum — the nation’s second-largest cable TV provider — were involved in a nearly 12-day impasse until coming to an agreement hours before the first Monday night NFL game of the season.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

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Ehmer joined Waffle House in 1992 and quickly rose to senior leadership, becoming president of the company in 2002, and later adding the titles of CEO and chairman, according to information from Georgia Tech, his alma mater.

“His leadership, dedication and warmth touched the lives of many, both within the Waffle House family and beyond. He leaves behind a remarkable legacy,” Mayor Andre Dickens said in a news release.

The board of directors for Waffle House issued a statement Sunday afternoon saying Ehmer died after a long illness. “He will be greatly missed by his entire Waffle House family,” the statement said.

Ehmer was chair of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Board of Trustees from 2012 to 2013 and served numerous organizations, including the Georgia Tech Foundation Board and the Georgia Tech Advisory Board.

The Waffle House chain of around-the-clock diners opened in 1955 and now boasts more than 1,900 locations in 25 states.

Ehmer is survived by three children, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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This story was first published on Sept. 8, 2024. It was updated on Sept. 9, 2024, to correct the name of Waffle House CEO Walt Ehmer’s alma mater. It is Georgia Tech, not Georgia Tech University.

Dressed in head-to-toe coveralls and fitted with respirators, the crew members toiling in a building without power had no obvious respite from the heat. Instead, they wore armbands that recorded their heart rates, movements and exertion levels for signs of heat stress.

Stephanie Miller, a safety and health manager for a U.S. government contractor doing cleanup work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, watched a computer screen nearby. A color-coding system with little bubbles showing each worker’s physiological data alerted her if anyone was in danger of overheating.

“Heat is one of the greatest risks that we have in this work, even though we deal with high radiation, hazardous chemicals and heavy metals,” Miller said.

As the world experiences more record high temperatures, employers are exploring wearable technologies to keep workers safe. New devices collect biometric data to estimate core body temperature – an elevated one is a symptom of heat exhaustion – and prompt workers to take cool-down breaks.

The devices, which were originally developed for athletes, firefighters and military personnel, are getting adopted at a time when the Atlantic Council estimates heat-induced losses in labor productivity could cost the U.S. approximately $100 billion annually.

But there are concerns about how the medical information collected on employees will be safeguarded. Some labor groups worry managers could use it to penalize people for taking needed breaks.

“Any time you put any device on a worker, they’re very concerned about tracking, privacy, and how are you going to use this against me,” said Travis Parsons, director of occupational safety and health at the Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America. “There’s a lot of exciting stuff out there, but there’s no guardrails around it.”

Vulernable to heat

At the Tennessee cleanup site, the workers wearing heat stress monitors made by Atlanta company SlateSafety are employed by United Cleanup Oak Ridge. The company is a contractor of the U.S. Department of Energy, which has rules to prevent on-the-job overheating.

But most U.S. workers lack protections from extreme heat because there are no federal regulations requiring them, and many vulnerable workers don’t speak up or seek medical attention. In July, the Biden administration proposed a rule to protect 36 million workers from heat-related illnesses.

From 1992 to 2022, 986 workers died from heat exposure in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Experts suspect the number is higher because a coroner might not list heat as the cause of death if a sweltering roofer takes a fatal fall.

Setting occupational safety standards can be tricky because individuals respond differently to heat. That’s where the makers of wearable devices hope to come in.

How wearable heat wear works

Employers have observed workers for heat-related distress by checking their temperatures with thermometers, sometimes rectally. More recently, firefighters and military personnel swallowed thermometer capsules.

“That just was not going to work in our work environment,” Rob Somers, global environment, health and safety director at consumer product company Perrigo, said.

Instead, more than 100 employees at the company’s infant formula plants were outfitted with SlateSafety armbands. The devices estimate a wearer’s core body temperature, and a reading of 101.3 degrees triggers an alert.

Another SlateSafety customer is a Cardinal Glass factory in Wisconsin, where four masons maintain a furnace that reaches 3000 degrees Fahrenheit.

“They’re right up against the face of the wall. So it’s them and fire,” Jeff Bechel, the company’s safety manager, said.

Cardinal Glass paid $5,000 for five armbands, software and air-monitoring hardware. Bechel thinks the investment will pay off; an employee’s two heat-related emergency room visits cost the company $15,000.

Another wearable, made by Massachusetts company Epicore Biosystems, analyzes sweat to determine when workers are at risk of dehydration and overheating.

“Until a few years ago, you just sort of wiped (sweat) off with a towel,” CEO Rooz Ghaffari said. “Turns out there’s all this information packed away that we’ve been missing.”

Research has shown some devices successfully predict core body temperature in controlled environments, but their accuracy remains unproven in dynamic workplaces, according to experts. A 2022 research review said factors such as age, gender and ambient humidity make it challenging to reliably gauge body temperature with the technology.

The United Cleanup Oak Ridge workers swathed in protective gear can get sweaty even before they begin demolition. Managers see dozens of sensor alerts daily.

Laborer Xavier Allison, 33, was removing heavy pieces of ductwork during a recent heat wave when his device vibrated. Since he was working with radioactive materials and asbestos, he couldn’t walk outside to rest without going through a decontamination process, so he spent about 15 minutes in a nearby room which was just as hot.

“You just sit by yourself and do your best to cool off,” Allison said.

The armband notifies workers when they’ve cooled down enough to resume work.

“Ever since we implemented it, we have seen a significant decrease in the number of people who need to get medical attention,” Miller said.

Collecting personal data

United Cleanup Oak Ridge uses the sensor data and an annual medical exam to determine work assignments, Miller said. After noticing patterns, the company sent a few employees to see their personal physicians, who found heart issues the employees hadn’t known about, she said.

At Perrigo, managers analyze the data to find people with multiple alerts and speak to them to see if there’s “a reason why they’re not able to work in the environment,” Somers said. The information is organized by identification numbers, not names, when it goes into the company’s software system, he said.

Companies keeping years of medical data raises concerns about privacy and whether bosses may use the information to kick an employee off a health plan or fire them, said Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“The device could hurt, frankly, because you could raise your hand and say ‘I need a break,’ and the boss could say, ‘No, your heart rate is not elevated, go back to work,'” Schwartz said.

To minimize such risks, employers should allow workers to opt in or out of wearing monitoring devices, only process strictly necessary data and delete the information within 24 hours, he said.

Wearing such devices also may expose workers to unwanted marketing, Ikusei Misaka, a professor at Tokyo’s Musashino University, said.

A partial solution

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health advises employers to institute a plan to help workers adjust to hot conditions and to train them to recognize signs of heat-related illness and to administer first aid. Wearable devices can be part of efforts to reduce heat stress, but more work needs to be done to determine their accuracy, said Doug Trout, the agency’s medical officer.

The technology also needs to be paired with access to breaks, shade and cool water, since many workers, especially in agriculture, fear retaliation for pausing to cool off or hydrate.

“If they don’t have water to drink, and the time to do it, it doesn’t mean much,” Juanita Constible, senior advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. “It’s just something extra they have to carry when they’re in the hot fields.”

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Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.

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Most people are now holding on to smartphones longer instead of regularly upgrading them, and there are many reasons why.

At the dawn of the smartphone age, you might have upgraded to a new device every few years to make sure you had the latest must-have features or because your carrier’s contract subsidized the purchase of the newest model. But that’s no longer the case as smartphone technology has matured and innovations have become more incremental, and carrier pricing models have changed.

There’s also an environmental push to keep old phones out of landfills as electronic waste becomes a larger sustainability issue. Smartphones these days are also just sturdier and better able to survive dunks and shocks.

“As long as you take care of your phone and keep it updated, you’re going to get at least four or five good years of use out of it,” said Chris Hauk, of Pixel Privacy, a tech website. Some device owners boast in online forums that they’ve had phones last more than seven years.

And if you’re paying over $1,000 for your smartphone, you’ll probably want to it to last as long as it can. Here are some tips to extend the lifespan of your Apple or Android mobile device:

Battery care

One of the biggest factor in your phone’s lifespan is the battery. A rechargeable battery’s chemical age isn’t related to when it was manufactured. Instead, it’s based on a complex mix of factors including “temperature history and charging pattern,” according to Apple.

“As lithium-ion batteries chemically age, the amount of charge they can hold diminishes, resulting in reduced battery life and reduced peak performance,” the iPhone maker says.

The company says its charging optimization technology is designed to improve battery life, and it’s safe for iPhone users to charge their phones overnight.

Samsung, meanwhile, says its lithium ion batteries do best when kept above 50% charge. It advises against running the battery down.

“Repeatedly allowing the battery to drain fully may shorten its life and decrease its overall capacity,” the company says in an online guide. “If this happens, you’ll need to charge the battery more frequently and it may last only a few hours before needing a charge, for example.”

Avoid extreme temperatures

Apple says that batteries warm up as they charge, which can shorten their lifespan. It warns against using your phone or charging it in very hot temperatures, above 95 degrees (35 Celsius), “which can permanently reduce battery lifespan.”

Samsung also says extreme heat or cold can damage batteries and warns people not to, for example, leave their phones in a car’s glove box when it’s very hot or cold. And don’t put your phone in a freezer either, it’s a myth that it can prolong battery life. “This is not correct and can damage your battery,” Samsung says.

Google, which makes the Android operating system and Pixel phones, says hot batteries drain faster, even when they’re not in use, and that can damage the battery.

Adjust your power options

Tweak your device settings so apps or features use less power, which extends your battery’s daily life and the time between charging cycles.

You can turn down your phone’s screen brightness, turn on the dark theme and reduce the time for the screen to power off. Enable the auto-brightness feature, which adjusts screen brightness according to the level of ambient light. Also check battery usage in your settings to see if there are any power-hungry apps you can switch off or uninstall.

If the power level dips below 10%, iPhone users can turn on low power mode to stretch their battery’s life before it need recharging. Samsung’s Android phones have a similar “power saving mode.” You can also leave it on all the time, but it might affect your phone’s performance.

Samsung says users can switch off Bluetooth or Wi-Fi if they’re not being used, although Apple advises leaving them on because they draw minimal power when not connected.

Use protection

Phones are sleek capsules but the glossy surface means they can slip easily out of your hand. So it goes without saying that you should get a sturdy protective case to help cushion the blow when you accidentally drop it.

Don’t forget a screen protector. Plastic versions are the cheapest option but can scuff easily, according to device repair website iFixit, which recommends ones made with TPU film or tempered glass, which offer better protection against scratches and drops.

Keep your device clean

Keeping your phone in your pocket or purse means its ports and sockets can collect lint and other debris that you’ll need to clean out.

“Take a little toothpick and just kind of get in and get rid of any debris,” said Hauk. “Also the speaker and the microphone grills on phones, they do get dirty,” so use a toothbrush to clean them, he said. Just make sure you’re flicking the debris away from the phone instead of pushing it deeper inside the tiny holes.

Update your device

Software is another important factor in a phone’s lifespan. Experts advise keeping your operating system and apps up to date so they have the latest privacy, security and battery management features.

That will be easier to do as your phone ages because some device makers have been extending the time limit for providing updates.

Google has pledged to provide Pixel 8 and newer phones with seven years of Android and security updates, compared with four to five years for older models. Samsung has also extended its operating system updates to seven years starting with its flagship S24 device launched earlier this year.

Apple doesn’t spell out how long it will support iOS updates for devices, although older devices like the iPhone 6s released in 2014 and the iPhone 8 were still getting security updates this year.

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Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.

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City attorneys are asking a judge to force that cluster of colleges just west of downtown to take down two of the three billboards on its campus. The city claims that Auraria, which is a state entity, is working with the billboard company Outfront Media to ignore zoning laws.

“We cannot comment as AHEC has not been served,” said Shaneis Malouff, AHEC chief of staff.

Denver caps its number of billboards, meaning an owner must remove one before it can erect another, and doesn’t allow electronic billboards in areas zoned for educational use.

So, city officials were surprised when a billboard cropped up in the Walnut parking lot on the campus’ far west side in 2014, according to their Aug. 29 lawsuit. But the city opted to let the billboard remain, making a one-time exception to its billboard zoning laws.

The matter seemed settled. But nine years later, the dormant disagreement re-emerged.

“On May 15, 2023, AHEC informed Denver that it intended to implement a billboard strategy involving the construction and operation of multiple digital media billboards on AHEC-owned property,” according to the city’s lawsuit, which uses an acronym for Auraria.

The city said it reminded Auraria “that erecting any billboard would be in violation of Denver zoning regulations” and the campus then flatly ignored that warning, building an Outfront digital billboard along Speer Boulevard without a permit in December 2023.

Then, in June, a third billboard went up at 1450 7th St., along Auraria Parkway. So, the city sued Auraria and Outfront, and asked Judge Andrew Luxen to make them take the signs down.

A spokeswoman for Outfront did not answer a request for comment. The publicly traded company operates more than 700 billboards within city limits, according to its website.

“The City Attorney’s Office does not comment on pending litigation,” spokeswoman Melissa Sisneros said, “including any matters related to the city’s motivations for filing law

Full story via BusinessDen

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The company, H3X, was founded by a team of engineers and has grown since its start in 2020 to 33 employees.

“We’re aiming to get to 45 to 50 by end of the year,” said Jason Sylvestre, co-founder and CEO.

The startup’s mission, Sylvestre said, is to help decarbonize the aviation, aerospace, marine, defense and heavy-industry sectors by designing and producing high-density, lightweight electric motors. He said H3X has won about $5 million worth of contracts with NASA and the U.S. Air Force.

In August, H3X announced $20 million in Series A fundraising. The round was led by Infinite Capital, with participation from Hanwha Asset Management, Cubit Capital, Origin Ventures, Industrious Ventures and Venn10 Capital. Other investors included Lockheed Martin Ventures, Metaplanet, Liquid 2 Ventures and TechNexus.

“It’s super exciting. We’ve been looking forward to this day for a while,” Sylvestre said. “The next six months are going to be pretty insane. We’ve got some very large contracts in the pipeline.”

Sylvestre, Max Liben, chief technology officer, and Eric Maciolek, president, formed the company in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were working remotely and living in three different states: Minnesota, California and Alabama.

After a round of fundraising, the three decided it was time to move into a building and start testing the hardware. They have a 17,000-square-foot facility in Louisville.

“We looked at a lot of different cities. Denver just had the right mix of everything we were looking for, with a really strong aerospace and defense ecosystem and an emerging startup scene,” Sylvestre said. “We also wanted our headquarters in a place where we wanted to live and that had a very high quality of life and would be easy to recruit people to move to. We need pretty specialized talent.”

H3X makes compact, lightweight electric motors ranging in power from 30 kilowatts to 30 megawatts. “We can power everything from small drones to large ships and airplanes,” Sylvestre said.

The company’s long-term mission is to advance the technology to electrify aviation. Sylvestre said the company’s current focus is on defense but it also has customers in the aerospace and marine industries.

“We’re pretty well into the commercialization process. We shipped our first products to customers last year,” Sylvestre said

The company is converting the contracts into multi-year orders, he added.

Nathan Doctor, founder and managing partner at Infinite Capital, said in a statement that over the past three years working with H3X, he has seen “a phenomenal display of rapid innovation” from the team.

“Bringing technical advancements to market this fast is rare, as they have already commercialized a series of market-leading electric motors,” Doctor said.

H3X is focused on scaling innovative technologies that Lockheed Martin Ventures believes could provide its customers with effective solutions for “electrifying legacy, multi-domain systems,” said Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of the investment company.

Sylvestre said the company’s motors can be used with batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or hydropower plants and can serve as generators without any changes required.

“The power density of our products is about 2 to 3 times higher over anything else that exists on the market,” Sylvestre said.

That means the motor will be roughly three times lighter than the next-best motor, he added. With aviation, one approach might be a hybrid system that reduces the weight of a battery pack. Sylvestre said H3X has some aviation customers who are looking to put electric-powered planes into service in 2028.

“One is working on a 19-seat aircraft and another is working on a 30-seat aircraft,” Sylvestre said. “Within five years, I think you’ll definitely see some aircraft that are operating using electric propulsion. It’s a lot closer than people realize.”

The company’s long-term focus is on aviation because the industry contributes to greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change and because it’s one of the most difficult industries to decarbonize.

In 2022, aviation accounted for about 2% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. In recent decades, air travel has grown faster than rail, road or shipping, the IEA said.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, said the demand for air travel is expected to rise by an average of 4.3% per year over the next 20 years.

“In terms of impact, aviation is the largest industry that our technology will impact just in terms of decarbonization,” Sylvestre said.

It served as the landing spot for U.S. presidents and celebrities when they came into town, and a gathering place for local movers and shakers cutting deals over power lunches at Ellyngton’s, cocktails at the Ship Tavern or cigars at Churchill Bar.

Generations of Coloradans celebrated proms, weddings and honeymoons there, enjoyed holiday dinners together at its restaurants or sipped tea under the soaring atrium with their aunts, moms and grandmas. Like clockwork every January, the hotel hosted auctions for the top steers selected at the National Western Stock Show.

In a city best known for beer, the Brown Palace represented champagne.

Former employees, however, are worried that the iconic property is on a downward spiral under its current owner, Crescent Real Estate LLC and management company, HEI Hotels & Resorts.

“The hotel is dying a tragic, slow death. It is already well along in that process. It would be like walking into grandma’s house and seeing her with bruises and skinny and no food in the fridge,” said Adrian Kley, a former bellman and concierge who left the hotel in March.

Management pushed back on such characterizations, saying the company has made investments in the property — including updates to the “premium” guest rooms — with the goal of maintaining the Brown Palace’s storied reputation.

The ex-employees pointed to a series of problems that raised concerns.

A basement chimney fire knocked the hotel’s boilers, a known problem area, out of commission in November 2022. A lack of heat and hot water closed the place during the busy Thanksgiving week. Maintenance crews switched to city steam, but the boilers still haven’t been replaced, resulting in complaints about low water pressure, fluctuating water temperatures and in some cases no hot water.

Not long after the boilers went down, a pipe on the sixth floor burst flooding a dozen rooms, a second-floor meeting room and Ellyngton’s, the hotel’s largest restaurant, said Jordan Saunders, the hotel’s former food and beverage manager.

The restaurant was temporarily relocated to the second floor, and more than a year passed before the original space was repaired, remodeled and reopened. Long-time patrons complained about the outcome, saying it converted a location known for its rich color palette and warmth into something more akin to a hospital cafeteria — cold, white and sterile, Saunders said.

A damaged front door required customized repairs and allowed cold winter air to infiltrate the lobby for weeks. Another broken pipe flooded the ballroom, which is in a nearby sister tower that operates as a Holiday Inn.

Missteps have continued into this year. Discounted room rates of below $100 a night were designed to boost occupancy, but also resulted in a rise in drunken and disruptive guests, Kley said.

To cut costs, HEI made moves in March that resulted in the departure of several longtime bellmen and valets who greeted guests and contributed to the hotel’s high service levels.

Management also reduced security staff shifts, said Melanie Burrow, former director of operations at The Brown Palace. More homeless people entered the hotel and fentanyl contamination showed up in lobby bathrooms, she said.

Hotel management announced the Palace Arms, which had been operating for 74 years, would close on May 4, only to reverse course after a public outcry and bring back a limited weekend schedule. Employees who worked at the restaurant faced whiplash.

“It was heartbreaking to see how badly the building and the people were treated by the current management company and ownership,” Burrow said. “The hotel has been declining for a number of years, but it is in a free fall now.”

A storied history, an uncertain future

Henry Cordes Brown, an Ohio businessman and builder, opened the hotel in 1892 at a then-princely sum of $2 million, the equivalent of $69 million today.

It occupies a triangle at the intersections of Broadway, Tremont and 17th streets, and its red sandstone exterior and Italian Renaissance design set it apart from nearby high rises.

As other hotels in the area and other buildings fell one by one, The Brown, at 321 17th St., remained standing.

By Denver standards, The Brown is old. Yet deterioration is a constant battle in old buildings and can be held at bay, former employees said, provided owners are committed to reserving money and making the required upgrades.

Viewing a historic icon as a short-term financial investment has put the hotel on a path of alienating a loyal customer base, and disrupted the hotel’s winning formula, said Jack Johnson, formerly the chef concierge at the hotel.

By diminishing the guest experience and not adequately investing in the building, and by lacking a long-term vision, Crescent will undercut the value of its investment, creating a lose-lose proposition for everyone, he warned.

When Crescent purchased the Brown Palace Hotel in June 2018, it pledged it would usher in a “new era of luxury and refinement for the iconic property,” according to a news release at the time.

“Crescent plans comprehensive investments that will enhance the property’s 241 exquisite guest rooms and Top of the Brown suites,” the company said.

Founded by John Goff, the company has set aside about $65 million to upgrade two hotels it owns in Dallas’s Uptown neighborhood — the Ritz-Carlton Dallas and the Hotel Crescent Court, according to The Real Deal.

That indicates that Crescent understands the importance of upgrading the older hotels it owns. And Jana Smith, the general manager of The Brown Palace, disputes criticisms that Crescent and HEI have not invested adequately in The Brown Palace or in its staffing.

“Crescent has made improvements since the purchase of the hotel, including renovating premium apartment-like guest rooms, offering an elevated experience on our top floors for our discerning travelers,” Smith said.

The hotel, part of Mariott’s Autograph collection since 2012, has turned a meeting room into a club lounge, renovated Ellyngton’s restaurant, refreshed the Palace Arms and done infrastructure work on the major mechanical systems, Smith said.

And plans are in the works for an upgrade of the Atrium Lobby, one of the hotel’s most distinctive features.

Former employees counter that the hotel’s previous owner had already made plans for the suite upgrades that Crescent followed through on. The Ellyngton’s renovation occurred because of the flooding from a broken pipe after plumbing, HVAC and other critical systems were neglected.

Crescent Real Estate is no stranger to Colorado, but its primary focus here and elsewhere has been on office buildings — including the Riverpoint, Riverview and Platte Fifteen office buildings in Denver. The Brown wasn’t its first hotel, but it represented a level of luxury it and HEI weren’t accustomed to, Johnson said.

Things came to a head in March, former employees said, when HEI tried to squeeze out money for repairs by reducing overhead. Among the cost-cutting moves was handing over valet and door services, which helped set the property apart and had been handled by employees with decades of experience, to an outside provider.

Although workers were offered positions at the other firm, the benefits were less and switching would require going for a month without health insurance coverage, a nonstarter for older workers, Kley said.

Smith disputes claims that The Brown has drastically cut its staffing level. In 2019, The Brown had 273 employees and today it has 254 positions, both filled and available. That lower headcount reflects the hit the hotel, like so many others, suffered during the pandemic, when travel ground to a halt.

“This is relatively minor given the market impact since 2020 and our goal is to get back to 273 plus,” she said.

Falling stars a bad omen

“The first day after (Crescent Real Estate) took over, they wheel us into a meeting room and say: ‘You no longer work for a hospitality company, you now work for a real estate company.’ My heart sank. A lot of us thought but how bad could it get?” Johnson said.

The answer wasn’t long in coming. The Forbes Travel Guide stripped The Brown Palace of its coveted four-star rating in 2020, a designation it had held since 1958, when it became the first Colorado hotel to receive it from Mobil, which originated the rankings, Johnson said.

“The Brown Palace is a (AAA) four-diamond hotel, and after the pandemic, we did not pursue a rating with Forbes since our TripAdvisor and Google ratings are both 4.5 stars which are ratings given by our guests; we believe this feedback is the most critical to our success,” Smith said.

TripAdvisor reviewers do give the hotel an average rating of 4.5, and numerous glowing reviews praise the hotel’s courteous employees, its beautiful design and rich history and the overall experience of staying there.

Where TripAdvisor ranks the hotel overall based on those reviews tells a different story. The Brown comes in 52nd out of 162 hotels in the metro area. Among luxury hotels, a much smaller category that it once dominated, it ranks ninth behind the likes of Halcyon, Four Seasons, the Crawford Hotel and Le Meridien.

U.S. News & World Report ranks the Brown Palace as 12th best hotel in Denver, 26th best in Colorado and 633rd best in the U.S.

Critical reviews are spread among the more complimentary ones on TripAdvisor. A sampling of some more recent and scathing comments:

• “I’ve stayed at other hotels for a fraction of the price with a million times better experience. For a ‘luxury’ hotel that costs several hundred dollars a night, a warm shower in a clean bathroom with edible room service food should be the bare minimum and the Brown Palace simply didn’t deliver.” — Vivian P., a guest from Plano, Texas.

• “This grand old hotel has fallen into disrepair. We’ve stayed at The Brown Palace for decades when visiting Denver, it’s lost its charm. The lobby is of course spectacular but it stops there. The room was awful. Chipped furniture, glass surfaces smeared, woodwork chipped and marked up, horrible bed, no water in the room, the air conditioning was abysmal, lukewarm at best. Very, very sad to see this beautiful old (lady) no longer treated with care and respect. It’s a real shame.” — yoginiok from Tulsa, OK

President Dwight Eisenhower made the Brown Palace his western campaign headquarters. The Beatles stayed there when they played their first concert in Colorado. It was among the locations where global leaders gathered for the G-8 Summit in 1997. And the Denver Broncos football team — that came together in the hotel’s lobby.

Have no doubts, Johnson said, The Brown Palace is no longer Denver’s top hotel.

“That star designation is a big thing on the luxury level. It is your identity to quality,” he said. “If you don’t care about it, you won’t get it. They didn’t care enough to try and meet the standards.”

Tough times in a tough neighborhood

Hospitality industry analysts looking in from the outside offer a slightly different take than front-line employees, saying that historic hotels and restaurants in downtown areas were among the hardest hit by the chaos the pandemic unleashed in 2020.

Business travel evaporated for months, cutting into a key revenue source for downtown properties. Remote work resulted in fewer office workers in the area and smaller crowds showing up for lunch or staying for drinks after work, said John Imbergamo, president of The Imbergamo Group and a long-time marketing consultant to restaurants.

The George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020 created a perception that downtown wasn’t safe, especially among older adults more likely to visit The Brown. The seemingly never-ending redevelopment of the 16th Street Mall has tested the staying power of numerous businesses in the area. It will be an improvement, but for now, it has made downtown a harder place to navigate.

Gravity in the downtown area has also shifted west to LoDo, the Central Platte Valley and RiverNorth. The Brown, once at the center of the action, increasingly finds itself at the periphery.

A loss of identity also appears to be at play. Johnson said the luxury hotel niche is a demanding space, but one that The Brown excelled at for years. By moving the hotel away from luxury toward more of a full-service model, the competition has expanded from about a half dozen serious rivals to more than 100. Standing out will be harder.

“In this type of hotel with such a deep-seated connection to the community and frequent guests, they will need to bring it back to prior service levels,” said Allison Ahrens, president of Hospitality Revenue Solutions in Denver.

There are examples of how that can be done. Although smaller and a year older than The Brown Palace, the Oxford Hotel near Union Station has invested consistently in upgrades and the guest experience, allowing it to remain a popular destination.

Its art-deco Cruise Room Bar, which opened on the day Prohibition ended in 1933, has crossed generational boundaries to become a destination in its own right.

The Crawford Hotel, carved from the marrow of the upper floors of Union Station, which is older than both the Oxford and Brown, now surpasses The Brown Palace on TripAdvisor rankings.

Despite being only a decade old, the Crawford underwent an $11 million upgrade earlier this year funded by the Union Station Alliance.

Being up there in age and being located downtown isn’t synonymous with failure, Imbergamo said. A lot of boutique hotels with popular restaurants have sprung up in recent years, proving that a market exists for a retro vibe.

A describable vibe was in short supply on a stay at The Brown Palace in late July. One person manned the main door, another the concierge desk and a third worked the front desk, where there was no line to check-in in the evening. No cookies or snacks were offered, only water in a plastic bottle.

Cocktails and music in the atrium lobby were advertised but not provided.

If security was present, they were as invisible as the “friendly” ghosts that supposedly haunt the hotel.

The room was clean but showing its age. Fixtures were worn aside from a newer LG television. Hot water took about two minutes to show up, but it did show up and the pressure was adequate. Unlike what another guest complained about while riding the elevator, which worked fine, the toilet didn’t back up.

“It doesn’t matter how much investment comes back into that property, the damage from the neglect is incalculable,” Kley lamented. “HEI steps over dollars to pick up dimes. They don’t want the money that comes with providing service.”

Kley said he heard from numerous regulars in his three years there who had finally suffered enough disappointment that they weren’t coming back.

“I saw the final straw for people who had a relationship with that building since they were children,” he said. When the bellmen and valets they respected were put in a tough spot, he and Johnson decided they had reached a final straw and resigned.

Employees kept hoping that Crescent would realize it had overpaid and wouldn’t obtain the return it had wished for. They hoped it would throw in the towel and sell before too much damage was done, Johnson said. They kept giving their best effort to preserve the hotel’s reputation.

If a hotel has “good bones” it can be rescued from poor management and underinvestment, said John Keeling, executive vice president at Valencia Hotels, which specializes in acquiring and refurbishing higher-end historic and luxury properties.

The Brown Palace still has people everywhere who love what she represents, Johnson said.

His hope is that one day the historic hotel will again be the toast of Denver.

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NEW YORK — “Very demure, very mindful” has become the latest vocabulary defining the internet’s summer. And TikTok creator Jools Lebron is now working to trademark uses of her now-viral words.

Lebron filed to trademark “very demure very mindful” for various entertainment and advertising services, including the promotion of beauty products, last week with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Two filings dated Thursday are under her legal name, a representative for Lebron confirmed to The Associated Press.

Trademarks can help secure rights to maintain certain business down the road. But it’s also possible — although rare — for content creators to make meaningful income after gaining social media fame through other avenues like direct brand sponsorships and viewer donations. Lebron, who is a transgender woman, said last month that she was able to finance the rest of her transition.

Lebron’s trademark filings are still pending, and it could be a while before there’s a final determination. But the move is particularly notable after several other individuals with no known connection to Lebron separately tried to register demure-related trademarks in an apparent effort to capitalize on the success of those phrases, much to the dismay of Lebron’s fans.

The saga, while unfinished, has spotlighted the complex process of filing trademarks that capture a viral moment — and the battle that social media content creators face to both get credit and find protections to monetize off the trends they popularize.

Here’s what you should know.

Can you trademark a viral phrase?

Yes. But in the U.S., there needs to be an attached commercial use.

“It’s not just coming up with a phrase … (or) using it on social media and making it go viral,” said Alexandra J. Roberts, a professor of law and media at Northeastern University, explaining there must be a connection to the sale of concrete goods or services. She calls trademarks a “source indicator,” as they help consumers understand who is producing what they’re buying now, but not necessarily who came up with a name in the first place.

The law is complicated, and trademarks are often determined on a case-by-case basis. Applications are specific to certain uses, allowing multiple brands to operate under similar names — like Dove chocolate and Dove soap, or Delta Faucet and Delta Airlines. Courts greenlight this when it’s assumed that consumers will easily be able to distinguish between such different products or services.

But a phrase or name that’s strongly associated with a particular individual can sometimes supersede that.

“Simplistically, the entire reason the trademark exists is to prevent consumer confusion,” said Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder. “And if (someone else) created a social media marketing service and called it ‘very demure, very mindful social media marketing,’ that would confuse consumers because they’re gonna think it’s associated with (Jools Lebron).”

Trademarks should not be mixed up with copyright. Anyone who has ever made a unique TikTok, for example, owns the copyright to that video, Fiesler explains. But there are still limitations to what’s copyrightable, and short phrases themselves almost never apply.

What options do content creators have to protect their work?

In today’s ever-digitized world of online trends, creators are increasingly expressing concerns about getting credited for their work. And for something like trademark rights, experts stress it’s a battle of both getting there first and having resources to see it through.

It’s not uncommon to see a handful of trademark applications bubble up in the midst of a viral moment. Earlier this year, for example, a handful of trademark applications were filed after Hailey Welch, also now known as “Hawk Tuah Girl,” became famous for using the phrase in a street interview.

Still, some phrases have been determined to be used too pervasively, making it harder for consumers to recognize it as a brand indicator. It can also be difficult when credit isn’t given to the creator who starts a trend in the first place — and experts note the consequences of that haven’t been felt equally in the past.

Historically, young women of color who start a viral trend or put a new phrase on the map have often seen their work get appropriated online — and potentially “get scooped” on trademark rights from someone with more resources, like connections to a lawyer, Roberts explained.

“There are a lot of stories of members of minoritized groups, and particularly women, coming up with new slang … and then seeing that get co-opted by somebody else — often a white guy, but not always … (who) gets out there as the first to register and really make money off it,” Roberts said.

Beyond trademark-specific disputes, Fiesler added that creators seeing their work stolen and reposted in other platforms for monetization continues to be a “huge problem” today, but she hopes the tide is starting to turn. That includes with Lebron, who has been so widely-credited for the “very demure” trend.

“I hope to continue to see there being very strong social norms that are enforcing this,” Fiesler said.

What’s the status of other demure-related trademark filings?

Three applications that were submitted before Lebron’s Thursday filings are still listed as live in the USPTO’s records — which would essentially make her “fourth in line” in consideration, Roberts said.

But it’s possible that others might later suspend their filings. And one of the applicants told NBC said that she filed in efforts to help Lebron hold on to trademark until she could transfer it.

What options does Lebron have?

Lebron’s legal team could potentially fight off rival filings or strengthen her own by negotiating with other applicants and updating her filing to reduce any overlap. She could also oppose a rival application down the road on the grounds of false association.

The trademark process itself could outlast the trend itself, taking anywhere between six to nine months, and sometimes closer to a year. And that can drag out even further with a legal battle or requested extensions.

Still, Roberts stresses that Lebron can currently “do whatever she wants in terms of use” and start selling merchandise.

There’s also nothing stopping someone from putting “very demure, very mindful” on the front of a t-shirt — as that technically qualifies as ornamental use, not trademark.

But getting those words as a brand, seen on something like an attached clothing tag, is when trademark rights would kick in.

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The Rev360 building in RiNo, which has sat unused since it was completed in July 2020, is for sale.

Rev360 is owned by San Francisco-based Shorenstein, which bought it in November 2021 for $72 million.

CBRE is marketing the five-story building at 3600 Brighton Blvd. The firm’s marketing materials don’t list an asking price, but state that the building “can be acquired at an incredible discount to replacement cost.”

That indicates Shorenstein, which declined to comment, is prepared to lose money on the deal. Ed Haselden, who was part of Rev360’s development team, told BusinessDen last month that the price Shorenstein paid in 2021 was “basically replacement cost,” or what it had cost to build the structure.

“We sold it for what we had in it,” Haselden said in July.

Shorenstein took a $67 million loan out on the building in January 2022, two months after buying it, according to publicly available loan documents, which do not clearly state the maturity date. The lender was Blackstone Mortgage Trust, which did not respond to a request for  comment.

The building is 170,000 square feet, with retail space on the ground floor and office space above.

Most buildings downtown and in RiNo that have been completed since the pandemic still have some vacancy. But Rev360 is unique in that none of its space has ever been occupied. WeWork technically leased part of the building for a time, but terminated its lease before moving in.

Full story via BusinessDen

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