Since the releases of iPhone 5 in the United States, people have been itching to get their hands on it.
With all these iPhone fanzines, how would you react if you stumble upon world's most popular smartphone lying on the street?
A group of pranksters in the Netherlands thought it would be funny to play iPhone 5 prank on people who are eagerly anticipating owning the phone.
The pranksters took the new released iPhone 5, literally super glued it to the ground in Leidseplein square in Amsterdam and they set up a camera to catch people's reactions.
Person after person approached, surprised to spot a new iPhone just lying on the pavement, and tried to pick it up. Some made multiple attempts to grab the phone. People even tried to kick the phone loose, but to no avail.
Watch this video of iPhone 5 prank below so you can LOL!
1. Nokia unveils next-generation Lumia 920 & 820 smartphones
Days ahead of the expected launch of Apple's next generation iPhone, Nokia on Wednesday fired its most credible salvo yet to capture marketshare in the lucrative and hyper-competitive smartphone industry.
Launching the next generation of devices in its Lumia series-the Lumia 920 and 820 smartphones-it appeared to be building on its hardware strengths and its partnership with Microsoft's Windows Phone platform to stem its sliding smartphone marketshare.
According to research firm IDC, in the first quarter of 2012, Nokia's marketshare fell 50.8% year-on-year, while Samsung gained 267% and Apple gained 88.7%.
The performance of the new Lumia devices, especially the 920 smartphone, is crucial for Nokia, which posted a $1.7 billion loss last quarter. It needs a best-selling phone real soon in a brutally competitive marketplace.
In recent days, however, the company's stock has rallied, as investors reposed confidence in the Finnish phone-maker's ability to come up with a winning device on the Windows platform. The legal setback suffered by Samsung and the Android ecosystem it backs in a recent legal battle with Apple, is expected to benefit rival platforms such as the Windows Phone.
The Lumia 920 boasts several features that elicited applause from New York's hard nosed tech press. The focus was on a 4.5-inch high-resolution display, built-in wireless charging that requires the user to merely place the phone on a small mat to charge, a feature called City Lens that identifies city blocks through the camera lens and overlays information on location and establishments, and an advanced camera with capabilities the company claimed beats many digital SLRs. The Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor at the heart of the device offers greater power with lower energy consumption, a spokesperson said.
[source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com]
Video: Nokia Latest Smartphones - Nokia New Lumia
2. Nokia unveils do-or-die smartphones
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has taken to the stage in New York to help Nokia, the once mighty European mobile phone giant, unveil two new smartphones in a make-or-break bid by both companies to create a hit product capable of taking on Apple and Samsung.
In a lavish launch event squeezed in to grab attention ahead of next week’s iPhone 5 presentation in California, Ballmer showed off the first Nokia handsets to run on Windows Phone 8 software.
Within a year Microsoft expects 400 million smartphone, PC and tablet devices could be running Windows 8, its reinvention of the world’s best selling PC operating system for the touchscreen age.
Nokia declined to reveal how much the new phones will cost, or the date on which the handsets will go on sale, and traders punished the company by sending the shares diving by as much as 15 per cent in New York.
The Lumia 920 and its budget companion the Lumia 820, unveiled by Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop in a warehouse overlooking New York’s Hudson river, have screens that respond to touch from gloves as well as bare fingers, internet connections that will work on European 4G networks, and can be recharged wirelessly on special charging plates.
In a gimmick reminiscent of the Google glasses still in development, a City Lens app allows users to hold the viewfinder up to look at a city street. Software then recognises key places, showing the names of restaurants and shops in clickable boxes on the screen.
Ballmer said: “This represents the largest opportunity available for software developers today. I bet you now the next app developer to hit it really, really big will be a developer on Windows.”
The timing is critical for both companies. Nokia is burning cash, has closed factories and research centres and laid off thousands of staff in the last year after sales of its more basic phones collapsed and the Finnish company lost its position as the world’s biggest manufacturer of handsets to Samsung.
Nokia last year tied its future to Microsoft by abandoning its own Symbian operating software in favour of Windows, but the first fruits of the so-called “WinKia” partnership were not a soaring success. The original Lumia handsets, unveiled in the second half of last year, have sold 6 million units this year – compared with iPhone’s 61 million units in the first six months of 2012. With many Asian manufacturers, such as Samsung, HTC, LG and Huawei, preferring Google’s free Android operating software to Windows – for which they must pay a licence fee – Nokia represents Microsoft’s best chance of attracting a smartphone following.
Smartphones and tablets have ushered in a personal computing revolution which is gathering momentum and unpicking Microsoft’s dominance in the sphere. Laptop and desktop computer sales are stagnating, while the smaller devices are now capable of carrying out many of their functions. Handheld computers also have the advantage of “instant on”, while older laptops are slow to fire up.
Microsoft has won plaudits for its new Windows software, which uses live tiles rather than static icons to populate the home screen and is seen as a leap forward in design terms from Apple’s iOS interface.
Michael Gartenberg, of the research firm Gartner, said: “No one will ever confuse Windows Phone with Android or iOS. The challenge is can Nokia and Microsoft explain how different is better? There is no doubt these devices stand out from the crowd. Visible difference is there. Now they need to tell consumers.”
With some commentators already dubbing the partnership NoWin, a pun on the WinKia moniker, Nokia and Microsoft will have to fight hard for a share of attention. The iPhone 5 is expected to go on sale later this month following its launch in San Francisco next Wednesday. Samsung’s Galaxy SIII, launched in May, is currently the world’s most popular model.
And Google is expected to transform Motorola’s product range, starting with a new HD model also unveiled on Wednesday, its biggest marketing push since finalising its deal to move into manufacturing with the acquisition of the US handset maker.
Elop said: “The most important thing is to get the consumer to experience the Lumia. We have the capabilities to differentiate ourselves.”
“It’s difficult to believe that Nokia and Microsoft, two dominant players in the market, are struggling to get a foothold in the smartphone space,” said telecoms expert Ernest Doku at price comparison site uSwitch. “It can’t be underestimated how important it is that the latest Lumia models capture the public’s imagination and quickly. This could well be the last throw of the dice for the Finnish manufacturer.”
[source:The Australian Financial Review -http://www.afr.com]
A missing woman was found safe after she reportedly left home to take a swim in the Snake River in her sleep.
The Times-News of Twin Falls, Idaho, reported Thursday that the 31-year-old unidentified woman was discovered drenched in water, hypothermic and disoriented after what appeared to be a nocturnal swim.
The wife and mother is said to have a history of wandering in her sleep.
The woman allegedly walked out of the house in her pajamas, barefoot. Her husband, when he discovered her missing and the sliding door of the home ajar, called the police at 2:25 a.m. Tuesday morning.
Neighbors and parishioners of the family's church reportedly helped Mini-Cassia Search and Rescue in looking for the woman. She was ultimately found a quarter-mile down the river and was taken to the Cassia Regional Medical Center.
The Cassia County Sheriff's Office added that this sleep-swimming is her third sleep-walking incident in the past five weeks, in a report provided to the paper.
A county judge subsequently called for the woman's mental health to be evaluated, which determined that she was not a threat to herself or to others
Anton Calouri, 31, is accused of threatening to kill the president and of assaulting a law enforcement official at the time of his arrest Tuesday in Federal Way, a suburb of Seattle, Washington.
"I will kill the president!!!!! " Calouri allegedly wrote in an email to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"COME GET ME... 'I' WON'T FIGHT AGAINST YOU... 'I' WANT YOU TO COME AND GET ME."
According to court papers, Secret Service agents and federal police stormed Calouri's apartment after he sent the threatening email to an FBI office.
"Recent national events are a stark reminder that we must take these threats of death or violence seriously," said US Attorney Jenny Durkan.
"This case had all the troubling ingredients: threats of violence and explosive devices, multiple weapons with hundreds of rounds and even brandishing of a weapon at law enforcement."
Calouri was armed when he was arrested. Obama, who was campaigning in Ohio on Tuesday, did not appear to be in any immediate danger.
ABC News affiliate KOMO reported that two weapons were confiscated at Calouri's home and that a bomb unit was called "out of an abundance of caution."
Obama has previously been the subject of threats and has received security protection from the Secret Service since becoming a presidential candidate in 2007.
In one such case, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez was accused of shooting at the White House in November. He was subsequently charged with the attempted assassination of the president.
Obama and his wife Michelle were in California at the time of that incident, and no one was injured.
Although widely expected, there was no iPhone 5 in 2011 after all, though the company did announce the iPhone 4S.
So we'll surely see a total revision of the iPhone during 2012.
Rumor On iPhone 5 Release Date September 21
While early reports pegged the new iPhone release date for October, landing closely to last year's schedule, it seems we'll be seeing the phone in September this year as Apple looks to take on Samsung's new phone sooner rather than later, with multiple sources claiming the iPhone 5 is supposed to be announced on September 12.
The rumor also says that the pre-order of the iPhone 5 will commence right after the announcement and the release date is supposed 9 days later on September 21.
iPhone 5 Features:
Rumored features of the new iPhone 5 include a larger screen, A6 CPU, iOS 6, small dock connector, 4G LTE and NFC. The overall design would not change dramatically. The backside material is not glass anymore as Apple introduces a unibody design. The rumors also say that the iPhone 5 is very thin.
Foxconn will again be manufacturing the handset. It'll put the Samsung Galaxy S3 "to shame" according to the CEO of Foxconn, Terry Gou - though he didn't say how.
Steve Jobs' iPhone 5 Legacy
Many sites have reported that Steve Jobs was working hard on the iPhone 5 project, which will apparently be a "radical redesign". We shall see... but the fact the iPhone 4S was so similar to the iPhone 4 suggests that he was working on something pretty special before his death.
Check out this handy iPhone 5 video detailing the latest rumours on release date, spec and more for a quick fix of next-gen Apple fun:
The initial results of an autopsy failed to determine the cause of Kirk Urso’s death, an Ohio coroner said Monday.
Kirk Urso, a captain on the North Carolina men’s soccer team that last December won a national championship, died early Sunday morning in Columbus, Ohio, after being rushed to a hospital from a bar. He was 22.
Jan Gorniak, the coroner who on Monday performed Urso’s autopsy, said during a phone interview that she could not immediately identify a cause of death. Gorniak said she needed to wait for the results of toxicology tests before determining why Urso died. Those test results could take 4-6 weeks, she said.
Gorniak said, however, that Urso’s autopsy discovered what she described as “non-specific heart changes.” She said the changes in Urso’s heart could have been the result of a condition that led to his death. Gorniak said further tests would determine the significance of the findings.
Urso had been living in Columbus, where he was a midfielder for the Columbus Crew of Major League Soccer. At UNC, he played in 90 matches – more than anyone in school history – and he was known for his leadership on the team and in the campus community. Urso was a part of four UNC teams that reached the College Cup.
In his first public statement about Urso since his death, UNC soccer coach Carlos Somoano described Urso on Monday as “an exceptional human being.”
“While he helped us win many games and ultimately a championship on the pitch, to us he was an inspirational student, teammate, friend, leader, and captain,” Somoano said in a statement that UNC released. “Those that he touched would most certainly agree.”
Details of Urso’s death have remained scarce. The Columbus Dispatch on Monday posted audio of the 911 call that led police to the Columbus bar where Urso had apparently collapsed. The caller, apparently referring to Urso, told the 911 dispatcher, “Officers are with him. A very drunk person fell down and now he’s unconscious.”
The newspaper reported that Urso was pronounced dead at 1:50 Sunday morning.
Urso scored three goals and had seven assists last season for the Tar Heels, who prevailed in a 1-0 victory against Charlotte in the NCAA championship game. He was an all-NCAA tournament selection and, for the second consecutive season, an all-ACC second-team selection.
Urso graduated with a degree in economics and was named an ACC scholar-athlete of the year after his junior season in 2010. He also served on UNC’s student-athlete advisory council.
Kirk Urso’s death shocked current and former teammates, and several members of the national soccer community – including Mia Hamm – posted tributes on Twitter. News of Urso’s death was especially difficult on those who knew him during his four years at UNC.
“On the field he was the competitor, the captain, very in charge,” said T.J. Scholl, a recent UNC graduate who had been friends with Urso since their freshmen year. “Off the field he was a friendly guy who would stop and talk to anyone who wanted to talk. Whether he knew you for five minutes or five years, he had something nice to say.”
By Andrew Carter - acarter@newsobserver.com Staff writer Jonathan Jones contributed to this report.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Midfielder Kirk Urso of Major League Soccer club Columbus Crew died on Sunday in a central Ohio hospital, a county coroner said.
No cause of death has been determined for the 22-year-old Urso, Franklin County Coroner Dr. Jan Gorniak said. An autopsy is scheduled for Monday.
Police were called to a bar in the city at about 12:50 a.m. and Urso was taken from there to the hospital, The Columbus Dispatch newspaper reported. Police did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press seeking details on the circumstances.
Urso played in six games this season and was sidelined by groin surgery in May. He was not with the team Saturday for its 1-0 loss to D.C. United in Washington, team spokesman Marco Rosa said.
The team withheld detailed comment, and the hospital said privacy laws ruled out any comment.
"The thoughts and prayers of the entire Columbus Crew and Hunt Sports Group are with the Urso family in this time of need," a team statement said.
Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber said the league would hold a moment of silence at games Sunday. "Major League Soccer mourns his death and sends our condolences to his family," he said.
Urso was in his first season with the Crew. In a team profile last month of Crew rookies, he said he was frustrated with injuries.
"To go from getting picked up late in the draft, to starting and contributing, and then to be out completely and hurt — it's really frustrating. Injuries are just a part of (soccer)," he said.
Andrew Garfield is poised to make his debut as Spider-Man when "The Amazing Spider-Man" hits theaters on July 3, but according to the young man's parents, fame hasn't gone to his head.
"He's always been grounded and he remains grounded today," Andrew's dad, Richard, told Access Hollywood's Shaun Robinson and Scott "Movie" Mantz, at the premiere of the film on Thursday night in Los Angeles. "We're more proud of him today than any other time because he's still the grounded young man that he always was and it's fantastic."
Andrew's dad and mom - Lynn - joined their son on the red carpet on Thursday and spoke about the day their baby called them up and told them he got the gig as Spider-Man.
"He called us in the middle of the night from Cancun when he got the job and we were in England and we couldn't go back to sleep because we were so excited," Richard recounted. "And I said to my wife, I'm sure that he dressed up -- we dressed him up [as] Spider-Man when he was like 2 or 3. Then, about three hours later, we still couldn't sleep, we raced downstairs, went through all of our old pictures, and there was a photograph of him!"
Andrew's mom, Lynn, actually made that first Spidey costume.
"[It was a] good costume. It was a genuinely good costume and much more comfortable than the one I've been wearing for this movie," Andrew laughed.
Andrew sent the picture of his toddler self in the homemade costume to his reps who actually passed it on to director Marc Webb.
"They were shameless enough to send it to, to the director," Andrew said, noting that it helped firm up in the producers' minds that he was the right man to do the red and blue Spidey suit.
"I think that they were reassured that I was a fan, you know? That makes a huge difference and, it means they knew I'd work as hard as I possibly could," Andrew said.
In another article:
Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone ‘Amazing’ together
Source: USA TODAY
Michael J. Fox almost came between Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield.
That is, he did it in the form of Scott Howard, the lupine character he played in 1985′s Teen Wolf. And he tangentially came up when Stone and Garfield bantered about their most beloved big-screen offerings the first time they met.
Looking back, says Stone to Garfield: “It was a good day. You asked me what my favorite movie was, and I said City Lights, and you thought I was being pretentious. I asked you what yours was, and you said Teen Wolf. Are you (expletive) kidding me? That’s even more pretentious! Please!”
Retorts Garfield, with no shame: “It’s my comfort movie. It kind of is my favorite movie. We had a giggle. It was a really nice day. I dropped you off at your hotel. We didn’t see each other for months until we started shooting.”
Now, Garfield, 28, and Stone, 23, find themselves in the rather complicated position of promoting a movie in which they play a couple, while they’re also a real-life item — something they resolutely avoid discussing. In The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot of the original trilogy that first starred Tobey Maguire as the titular webslinger, Garfield is Peter Parker, an insecure, insular high-schooler who gets bitten by an arachnid and suddenly finds himself with superpowers that he has to learn to control. Early reviews of the movie, opening tonight in select theaters and nationwide Tuesday, have been largely positive. And Stone is his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, an outspoken, smart and charismatic foil to Peter’s natural reticence.
To him, she’s Em. To her, he’s Garfy. During an interview at the Crosby Street hotel, Garfield and Stone are by turns giggly, focused and affectionate. She’s irresistibly outgoing and pulsates with energy. He’s a little more circumspect and restrained, but can’t sit still and keeps announcing how “hyper” he feels. You sense why they connected, both as actors and as individuals.
First impressions count
“I went and auditioned with this guy who, right now, doesn’t seem like much. But let me tell you, on-screen, what a joy! He’s really one of the best actors. Earmuffs, because I don’t want him to hear it,” says Stone. “He’s incredible to work with. At the audition, I was instantly like, I could learn so much from this person. I didn’t go to theater school. I’m learning by doing.”
Garfield had been reading with actresses when Stone came to meet him and director Marc Webb. “Em was the last, on the last day. I was knackered. I was toast. She came in, and I woke up. I remember what happened in between takes,” says Garfield. “I’d only ever seen her do Zombieland and Superbad. I knew you were funny as hell. We did the breakup scene, and it killed me. I was shocked and surprised and upset. And you were so hard on yourself. In between, she just made me laugh. And I made you laugh.”
The spark wasn’t lost on Webb. “She brought out this humor in him, and he brought out this depth in her. There was a magical quality about them. Andrew has an ability to do emotional gravity really well. Emma’s presence is so light. Put them together and they had spontaneous grounded realism. They were so naturalistic. They never fake things.”
Garfield and Stone found ways to humanize and ground the story, based on the Marvel character with a secret identity. Garfield’s Peter Parker is a loner who skateboards and takes photos, and is desperate to learn what happened to his dead parents. Stone’s Gwen is candid and confident, and befriends Peter, boosting his self-assurance.
Garfield, an American-born, English-bred actor who studied theater in the U.K. and was until now best-known for playing Eduardo Saverin in the 2010 film The Social Network, says he related to Peter entirely.
“I’m a skinny kid. He feels like an underdog. I felt like an underdog. He knows the difference between right and wrong, and I’m pretty sure I do, too,” says Garfield. “That heroic impulse, without having the physical authority to do anything about it. The science mind is something I admire in him that I don’t have. So? Gwen?”
Stone, a veteran of last year’s Oscar-nominated blockbuster The Help, picks up where Garfield left off. “Gwen is the oldest in her family and feels a certain sense of responsibility, and I relate to that. She’s valedictorian. I was first chair in flute. I made sure I got all A’s. It was weird. I didn’t like school at all, but I could not get a B,” says Stone. “I’m not a perfectionist. I was only in school until sixth grade, and then I was home-schooled. Whatever I could control at that time, I felt like I needed to control, which I don’t feel like so much anymore.”
Ask them what they took away from working together, and both seem a little bashful. “It’s so weird to compliment each other,” says Garfield, but with a little urging, he does it anyway. “Oh, boy. A lot. I learned so much. I learned about joy from Em. I learned how work can be — sorry, I’m getting a little bit serious here — I learned how important joy is within a work environment. And when you’re joyous and feeling confident, you can give your best.”
Stone, who wrapped the fall release Gangster Squad with Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling, says she too “learned so much. The level of preparation he comes with is staggering. He moves with you and gives you whatever you need to reach that place. He’s the opposite of an island. So many actors are out for themselves, and that’s the last thing he is. He’s also a total (expletive).”
“She’s a complete (expletive),” says Garfield.
Life-changing experience
Now, the two are adjusting to headlining a blockbuster. They’ve hop-scotched around the globe, promoting Spider-Man and eliciting the kind of attention neither had tasted before. Stone, with her penchant for zingers and wisecracks, seems like the least angsty person you could meet, but admits that she’s a little freaked out by the possibility of being a massive summer tentpole’s female lead, as opposed to part of an ensemble with The Help.
“I didn’t know this at the time, but this part of it is the biggest challenge. The aftermath. The anonymity loss. Your entire life has changed. My life changed doing the movie. I’ve had an anxiety since I was a kid, and I learned in therapy early on that I’m not supposed to be fatalistic. That’s where my brain goes. I’ve been taught to not think about these things, to not shoot myself into the future, and to not taking parts because it might change my life,” says Stone.
Garfield, despite the attention Social Network garnered, has stayed fairly low-key, recently finishing a Tony-nominated turn on Broadway in Death of a Salesman.
“I occasionally have someone going ‘Where do I know you from?’ It’s begun to be more, because people are more aware of this movie,” says Garfield. “I feel the exact same way as Em. My only hesitation in taking this on was the life effect that it would have. But here we are. So we’ll see. It’s a weird experience to have. It seems like certain people are good at it or welcome it or entertain it. It’s invasive, but you can’t complain. It is what it is. We knew walking in that it was a possibility, and you can privately freak out and, in public, be thankful that you can act for a living.”
“I completely agree,” says Stone. “I’m going to go to bed.”
“The paparazzi can’t get into your bed. Unless you date one,” says Garfield, causing Stone to laugh and cover her face in mock (or perhaps real) horror.
And while on the subject of dating, how do Garfield and Stone address their real-life situation?
“Hey!” says Stone, with a chortle.
“We’re not together in real life!” jokes Garfield. “It’s weird because of that question. We don’t talk about anything personal. That’s just the way it is. Right now, we’re just actors. Em will soon be a producer, too. It’s just something that’s personal, and this is work, really. Even though this interview is a genuine connection.”
Webb won’t go there, either. “Oh, I don’t know, and I’m not going to comment on that,” he says. “I don’t think they’re interested in contributing to celebrity culture. They like acting more than they like publicity. They’re private people.”
And that’s why Stone carefully, and sweetly, explains her unwillingness to discuss Garfield.
“There’s such a great sense of comfort in knowing that the only thing you have control over is what you say. People can say and do all they want. If it never comes out of your own mouth, you still get to keep that semblance of what is sacred to you,” says Stone. “You can’t undo things.”
Nora Ephron, an essayist and humorist in the Dorothy Parker mold (only smarter and funnier, some said) who became one of her era’s most successful screenwriters and filmmakers, making romantic comedy hits like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally,” died Tuesday night in Manhattan. She was 71.
The cause was pneumonia brought on by acute myeloid leukemia, her son Jacob Bernstein said.
In a commencement address she delivered in 1996 at Wellesley College, her alma mater, Ms. Ephron recalled that women of her generation weren’t expected to do much of anything. But she wound up having several careers, all of them successfully and many of them simultaneously.
She was a journalist, a blogger, an essayist, a novelist, a playwright, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a movie director — a rarity in a film industry whose directorial ranks were and continue to be dominated by men. Her later box-office success included “You’ve Got Mail” and “Julie & Julia.” By the end of her life, though remaining remarkably youthful looking, she had even become something of a philosopher about age and its indignities.
“Why do people write books that say it’s better to be older than to be younger?” she wrote in “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” her 2006 best-selling collection of essays. “It’s not better. Even if you have all your marbles, you’re constantly reaching for the name of the person you met the day before yesterday.”
Nora Ephron was born on May 19, 1941, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the eldest of four sisters, all of whom became writers. That was no surprise; writing was the family business. Her father, Henry, and her mother, the former Phoebe Wolkind, were Hollywood screenwriters who wrote, among other films, “Carousel,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and “Captain Newman, M.D.”
“Everything is copy,” her mother once said, and she and her husband proved it by turning the college-age Nora into a character in a play, later a movie, “Take Her, She’s Mine.” The lesson was not lost on Ms. Ephron, who seldom wrote about her own children but could make sparkling copy out of almost anything else: the wrinkles on her neck, her apartment, cabbage strudel, Teflon pans and the tastelessness of egg-white omelets.
She turned her painful breakup with her second husband, the Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, into a best-selling novel, “Heartburn,” which she then recycled into a successful movie starring Jack Nicholson as a philandering husband and Meryl Streep as a quick-witted version of Ms. Ephron herself.
When Ms. Ephron was 4, her parents moved from New York to Beverly Hills, where she grew up, graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1958. At Wellesley, she began writing for the school newspaper, and in the summer of 1961 she was a summer intern in the Kennedy White House. She said later that perhaps her greatest accomplishment there was rescuing the speaker of the house, Sam Rayburn, from a men’s room in which he had inadvertently locked himself. In an essay for The New York Times in 2003, she said she was also probably the only intern that President John F. Kennedy had never hit on.
After graduation from college in 1962, she moved to New York, a city she always adored, intent on becoming a journalist. Her first job was as a mail girl at Newsweek. (There were no mail boys, she later pointed out.) Soon she was contributing to a parody of The New York Post put out during the 1962 newspaper strike. Her piece of it earned her a tryout at The Post, where the publisher, Dorothy Schiff, remarked: “If they can parody The Post, they can write for it. Hire them.”
Ms. Ephron stayed at The Post for five years, covering stories like the Beatles, the Star of India robbery at the American Museum of Natural History, and a pair of hooded seals at the Coney Island aquarium that refused to mate.
“The Post was a terrible newspaper in the era I worked there,” she wrote, but added that the experience taught her to write short and to write around a subject, since the kinds of people she was assigned to cover were never going to give her much interview time.
In the late 1960s Ms. Ephron turned to magazine journalism, at Esquire and New York mostly. She quickly made a name for herself by writing frank, funny personal essays — about the smallness of her breasts, for example — and tart, sharply observed profiles of people like Ayn Rand, Helen Gurley Brown and the composer and best-selling poet Rod McKuen. Some of these articles were controversial. In one, she criticized Betty Friedan for conducting a “thoroughly irrational” feud with Gloria Steinem; in another, she discharged a withering assessment of Women’s Wear Daily.
But all her articles were characterized by humor and honesty, written in a clear, direct, understated style marked by an impeccable sense of when to deploy the punchline. (Many of her articles were assembled in the collections “Wallflower at the Orgy,” “Crazy Salad” and “Scribble Scribble.”)
Ms. Ephron made as much fun of herself as of anyone else. She was labeled a practitioner of the New Journalism, with its embrace of novelistic devices in the name of reaching a deeper truth, but she always denied the connection. “I am not a new journalist, whatever that is,” she once wrote. “I just sit here at the typewriter and bang away at the old forms.”
Ms. Ephron got into the movie business more or less by accident after her marriage to Mr. Bernstein in 1976. He and Bob Woodward, his partner in the Watergate investigation, were unhappy with William Goldman’s script for the movie version of their book “All the President’s Men,” so Mr. Bernstein and Ms. Ephron took a stab at rewriting it. Their version was ultimately not used, but it was a useful learning experience, she later said, and it brought her to the attention of people in Hollywood.
Her first screenplay, written with her friend Alice Arlen, was for “Silkwood,” a 1983 film based on the life of Karen Silkwood, who died under suspicious circumstances while investigating abuses at a plutonium plant where she had worked. Ms. Arlen was in film school then, and Ms. Ephron had scant experience writing for anything other than the page. But Mike Nichols, who directed the movie (which starred Ms. Streep and Kurt Russell), said that the script made an immediate impression on him. He and Ms. Ephron had become friends when she visited him on the set of “Catch-22.”
“I think that was the beginning of her openly falling in love with the movies,” Mr. Nichols said in an interview, “and she and Alice came along with ‘Silkwood’ when I hadn’t made a movie in seven years. I couldn’t find anything that grabbed me.” He added: “Nora was so funny and so interesting that you didn’t notice that she was also necessary. I think a lot of her friends and readers will feel that.”
Ms. Ephron followed “Silkwood” three years later with a screenplay adaptation of her own novel “Heartburn,” which was also directed by Mr. Nichols. But it was her script for “When Harry Met Sally,” which became a hit Rob Reiner movie in 1989 starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, that established Ms. Ephron’s gift for romantic comedy and for delayed but happy endings that reconcile couples who are clearly meant for each other but don’t know it.
“When Harry Met Sally” is probably best remembered for Ms. Ryan’s table-pounding faked-orgasm scene with Mr. Crystal in Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side, prompting a middle-aged woman (played by Mr. Reiner’s mother, Estelle Reiner) sitting nearby to remark to her waiter, indelibly, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
The scene wouldn’t have gotten past the Hollywood censors of the past, but in many other respects Ms. Ephron’s films are old-fashioned movies, only in a brand-new guise. Her 1998 hit, “You’ve Got Mail,” for example, which she both wrote (with her sister Delia) and directed, is partly a remake of the old Ernst Lubitsch film ‘The Shop Around the Corner.”
Ms. Ephron began directing because she knew from her parents’ example how powerless screenwriters are (at the end of their careers both became alcoholics) and because, as she said in her Wellesley address, Hollywood had never been very interested in making movies by or about women. She once wrote, “One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there’s no confusion about who’s to blame: you are.”
Mr. Nichols said he had encouraged her to direct. “I knew she would be able to do it,” he recalled. “Not only did she have a complete comprehension of the process of making a movie — she simply soaked that up — but she had all the ancillary skills, the people skills, all the hundreds of things that are useful when you’re making a movie.”
Her first effort at directing, “This Is My Life” (1992), with a screenplay by Ms. Ephron and her sister Delia, based on a novel by Meg Wolitzer about a single mother trying to become a standup comedian, was a dud. But Ms. Ephron redeemed herself in 1993 with “Sleepless in Seattle” (she shared the screenwriting credits), which brought Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan together so winningly that they were cast again in “You’ve Got Mail.”
Among the other movies Ms. Ephron wrote and directed were “Lucky Numbers” (2000), “Bewitched” (2005) and, her last, “Julie & Julia” (2009), in which Ms. Streep played Julia Child.
She and Ms. Streep had been friends since they worked on “Silkwood” together. “Nora just looked at every situation and cocked her head and thought, ‘Hmmmm, how can I make this more fun?’ ” Ms. Streep wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday.
Ms. Ephron earned three Oscar nominations for best screenplay, for “Silkwood,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally.” But in all her moviemaking years she never gave up writing in other forms. Two essay collections, “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Reflections on Being a Woman” (2006) and “I Remember Nothing” (2010), were both best sellers. With her sister Delia she wrote a play, “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” about women and their wardrobes (once calling it “ ‘The Vagina Monologues’ without the vaginas”) and by herself she wrote “Imaginary Friends,” a play, produced in 2002, about the literary and personal quarrel between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy.
She also became an enthusiastic blogger for The Huffington Post, writing on subjects like the Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn’s accidentally putting a hole in a Picasso he owned and Ryan ONeal’s failing to recognize his own daughter and making a pass at her.
Several years ago, Ms. Ephron learned that she had myelodysplastic syndrome, a pre-leukemic condition, but she kept the illness a secret from all but a few intimates and continued to lead a busy, sociable life.
“She had this thing about not wanting to whine,” the writer Sally Quinn said on Tuesday. “She didn’t like self-pity. It was always, you know, ‘Suck it up.’ ”
Ms. Ephron’s first marriage, to the writer Dan Greenburg, ended in divorce, as did her marriage to Mr. Bernstein. In 1987 she married Nicholas Pileggi, the author of the books “Wiseguy” and “Casino.” (Her contribution to “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure,” edited by Larry Smith, reads: “Secret to life, marry an Italian.”)
In addition to her son Jacob Bernstein, a journalist who writes frequently for the Styles section of The Times, Ms. Ephron is survived by Mr. Pileggi; another son, Max Bernstein, a rock musician; and her sisters Delia Ephron; Amy Ephron, who is also a screenwriter; and Hallie Ephron, a journalist and novelist.
In person Ms. Ephron — small and fine-boned with high cheeks and a toothy smile — had the same understated, though no less witty, style that she brought to the page.
“Sitting at a table with Nora was like being in a Nora Ephron movie,” Ms. Quinn said. “She was brilliant and funny.”
She was also fussy about her hair and made a point of having it professionally blow-dried twice a week. “It’s cheaper by far than psychoanalysis and much more uplifting,” Ms. Ephron said.
Another friend, Robert Gottlieb, who had edited her books since the 1970s, said that her death would be “terrible for her readers and her movie audience and her colleagues.” But “the private Nora was even more remarkable,” he added, saying she was “always there for you with a full heart plus the crucial dose of the reality principle.”
Ms. Streep called her a “stalwart.”
“You could call on her for anything: doctors, restaurants, recipes, speeches, or just a few jokes, and we all did it, constantly,” she wrote in her e-mail. “She was an expert in all the departments of living well.”
The producer Scott Rudin recalled that less than two weeks before her death, he had a long phone session with her from the hospital while she was undergoing treatment, going over notes for a pilot she was writing for a TV series about a bank compliance officer. Afterward she told him, “If I could just get a hairdresser in here, we could have a meeting.”
Ms. Ephron’s collection “I Remember Nothing” concludes with two lists, one of things she says she won’t miss and one of things she will. Among the “won’t miss” items are dry skin, Clarence Thomas, the sound of the vacuum cleaner, and panels on “Women in Film.” The other list, of the things she will miss, begins with “my kids” and “Nick” and ends this way:
“Taking a bath
Coming over the bridge to Manhattan
Pie.”
