2012 saw us publish 15,602 stories for your reading pleasure. That’s a lot of internet. Out of all those stories, here are the top 10 posts that you read the most.
1. Gizmodo Australia Scoops The Nexus 7
The internet is full of rumours, speculations and fakes, but every so often you’ll find a gem. The Nexus 7 was our gem.
A week out from Google’s annual I/O conference in San Francisco and the rumour mill was running hot. We’re likely to see a new tablet, but which one? Google Glass might make an appearance and we might see some new home entertainment kit. Those were the whisperings.
We managed to get our hands on a confidential briefing document from Asus and Google that detailed the Nexus 7, and we were more than happy to tell you exactly what it was before people had even taken their seats at I/O. [Read More]
2. China’s Strange Construction Work
China builds some cool stuff like high-speed rail and most of the world’s gadgets, but this one stumped us.
We asked the question, “What The Hell Is China Building Here?” and the mind boggled at the possible answers. To me, it looks like the birth of the Stargate program. [Read More]
3. Mythbusting Samsung’s $US1 Billion Apple Penalty
I’m really sorry about this, but if you were stupid enough to believe it in the first place, that’s on you.
It was postulated that after being hit with a crushing $US1 billion fine for patent infringement, Samsung reportedly got some of its own back by delivering the money to Apple in coins loaded in garbage trucks. Oh, what a jape! Shame that it’s horseshit.
We took apart the myth and found that it was nothing but a cleverly authored hoax. [Read More]
Image: Dekay.
4. Hack The iPad For Personal Hotspot
Personal Hotspot was a feature left by the wayside for Australian iPad users this year. Thankfully we were there to help with this step-by-step guide that showed you how to get it back without having to jailbreak your device. [Read More]
5. The Secret Music Of Birds
This video taught us to look at the world differently, after a composer arranged birds on a wire into a musical masterpiece. [Read More]
6. The Curiosity Rover Finds Something
When the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars, it was a big deal. What was a bigger deal was when the little guy reportedly found something that NASA promised us was something “for the history books”. [Read More]
7. The Best Value iPhone 5 In Australia
Bargain hunters ho! When the iPhone 5 came out in September, you wanted to know who had the best value deal.
The answer then is still the same as the answer now: it’s Virgin Mobile! See how the others stack up. [Read More]
8. NASA Turns To MIT Student To Save Apollo 13
Nothing brings Mankind together quite like tragedy, disaster and space. When the three combined to form the disastrous Apollo 13 mission in April 1970, NASA was faced with the problem of bringing three men home from the black.
An ex-NASA staffer did a Reddit AMA about the whole thing, and revealed that the idea to turn the spacecraft around wasn’t from the space agency, rather it was from an unnamed MIT student. This is a fascinating story and one of my favourite from this year. [Read More]
Image: Dave Young, CC2.0
9. Apple’s First Evangelist On His Break-Up With iOS
My chat with Guy Kawasaki — one of Apple’s first Evangelists back in the 1980s — was brief but endlessly fascinating. From it I learned that no matter how much you love something, it’s still possible to let it go in favour of something better. For Guy, he passed up iOS for Android and hasn’t looked back since. [Read More]
10. Hurricane Sandy Live
As Hurricane Sandy terrorised the east coast of the US, these five webcams were on stand-by to stream the disaster live to the world. It’s almost perverse when you think about it… [Read More]
What were your favourite posts of 2012? Let us know in the comments!