2012: TechCrunch Year In Review

We started the year at CES where it was clear that Samsung is the new Apple.

Late January brought the Crunchies, our annual awards fest where we gave Dropbox the nod for startup of the year. We were also treated with the hip hop of Booby Hammer, son of the noted VC, Mr. MC Hammer. Seriously.

Kodak dipped and died this month and Apple also didn't release the iPhone 6. But something big was on the horizon…

Windows 8 came out in consumer beta. We liked it. Dreamers dreamt of the iPad 3.

We talked of esprit. A start-up offered bras. We also went hands-on with the HTC One V. Felt great.

In March, rumors of The iPad 3 came true and its Retina goodness amazed MG.
Anthony Ha railed against SoLoMo which, I believe, is a type of Italian salami. Creepers could use SoLoMo to find Girls Around Them and we launched our TC/Drama vertical which, thankfully, has been surprisingly quiet.

Matt detailed how citizens of his hometown, Flint, Michigan, started using social media help save the city.

March also brought us the near death of Best Buy but an anonymous store manager assured us that everything was fine on the floor. Speaking of lost causes, Matt told us to believe in BlackBerry again. A tweet told us otherwise.

Digg headed to WaPo and Rovio sold 50 million copies of Angry Birds.

Colleen worked out with a device strapped to her, resulting in a leaner, meaner Taylor. The Winklevossi became WinkleVCs. Samsung rose while Nokia fell while we all got drunk on interesting beer. Nintendo (Nintendo!) saw profits fall. Some analyst said Apple was Sony.

An iPhone-powered electronic guitar almost won Disrupt NYC 2012 — but UberConference took home the cup.

Kickstarter seemed to be hiding failed projects (but it wasn't). Microsoft plopped out a release preview. Google Glass started popping up all over. What's happening over at Apple? They're looking for a connector design engineer!

Ohhhhh…

Samsung launched the Galaxy S III.

John, Matt, and Jordan hit the road in two Honda Pilots and toured the Southern startup scene drawing huge crowds in Savannah, Atlanta, Durham, Charlotte, and Greenville. Crunchbase is a treasure. Apple won the Flash Wars.

We loved Alexia and felt bad for her.

Amazon trips. Devin spoke of Stranded Vessels. Who didn't like the Nexus 7? Not us!

Bezos walked into a bar.

This is a LEGO wheelchair. Seriously.

Winter began coming. Skydrive too.

Mountain Lion is all over the place. Obama is all over the place.

Linux still lived. WebOS was open. It was a weird month for news.

Machines made friends with us. Apple opened a flagship. Romain was up all night night for the iPhone 5.

Did we mention iPhone 5?

MG didn't use the word Apple. France was Free and liked it. Eric honored a pioneer: his grandfather.

Romain told us that tech tells stories. GalNote!!

If there are no keyboards, how will we type?

We kept typing.

November brought us Sandy and a huge mess. Thousands were out of power along the Eastern seaboard and we finally saw the effect of global weirding.

The iPad Mini hit the shelves, just as we expected. Google fought back with the Nexus 4 and 10. Nokia gave it another try. Wii had fun.

We visited Detroit 2.0 during our Northern Meetups and figured out why people were returning to the rust belt. Apple stock crashed.

Alex called enterprise computing a stinking mess and a fake press release fooled us all. Luckily, we got to talk a little about churn.

Darrell asked us if we all want to make comic books. We do. Then A child's toy became a cheap mine-clearing robot.

More problems at Apple. But are they real problems? Alex brought the science with his look at AWS.

These dice are amazing.

On the 21st the world didn't end. Instead, Snapchat nearly destroyed it but Jordan helped explain what was up.

Tragedy. Aftermath.

Happy New Year.