(Photo: DeviantArt)

2012 was quite a year for the New York tech community. Several NYC startups scored monster exits, while others raised millions to up their chances of scoring a ping pong table for the office. Whether or not that hotly debated bubble bursts, we imagine 2013 will be another exciting year for NYC's tech set. Here are some New Year's resolutions from some of the NYC tech community's boldest names.

Rachel Haot, NYC Chief Digital Officer

1.      Cook more meals at home (FreshDirect and BlueApron)

2.      Shop local (local goods on Etsy: http://on.nyc.gov/ZPpbIp)

3.      Read more books (both physical and digital: all three NYC public library systems now offer e-books)

4.      Volunteer more often (http://www.nycservice.org/#s)

5.      Learn a new skill – like middle eastern cooking or how to use a letterpress.

Ryder Ripps, Cofounder of OkFocus

Work more, vroom bye haters.

Mallory Blair, Cofounder of Small Girls PR

Identifying our year's wins and losses and using that information to create defined roles for new team members to hire in the first quarter. Then the rest of 2013 is  about running the business instead of being the business.

Cindy Gallop, Founder of Make Love Not Porn

1. To champion and help every entrepreneur who wants to change the world through sex....This is the one place with enormous potential for innovation, disruption, and colossal financial returns, that the tech world refuses to go. I want to help drive more open-mindedness in the tech community around startups to do with sex.

2. To identify and use anything that is the future of money and payments. This resolution is born out of the frustrations and difficulties we've had setting up our payments infrastructure for MakeLoveNotPorn.tv.

Those difficulties led us to spend a lot of time and effort researching and talking to fintech startups, with the result that I am now passionate about working with and using anyone/thing inventing the future of money, finance and payments, both in an MLNPTV context and also a personal context.

Paul Berry, Cofounder of RebelMouse

My resolution is to keep focused and clever and build the fundamental culture for RebelMouse to grow from.

Christina DiRusso, PR Manager at Livestream

More: Reading, Engineering (currently learning to be a Livestream Encoding Engineer), Entertaining in, and exploring, my new Brooklyn hood, and Reality-TV watching. Less: Emailing, English (honing my Italian skills), Gchatting with my dad.

Josh Miller, Cofounder of Branch

Figure out how to get my (non-techie) roommates to be addicted to Branch, and learn how to rap so I can complement A-Flock's beat boxing (one of our engineers).

Dave Winer, Software Developer and Writer

My resolution for the New Year is: I will do what I can to make tech writing more literate. (Ed. Note: Read more about Mr. Winer's resolution here.)

Ricky Robinett, Hacker at Ordr.in

Be the first hacker in XXL.

Jason Baptiste, Cofounder of OnSwipe

On a personal level, I really want to get back into writing and blogging.  It's why I started Onswipe and lead to my book coming out.  On a professional level?  It's growing Onswipe in a revenue generating machine.  It's an aggressive goal and year, but we have the team + traction to do it.

Jose Mejia, Editorial Director at Huge

One of my resolutions, which I think a lot of people can relate to if they're honest with themselves, is to stop using work/being busy as an easy excuse for what are really just basic character flaws that I need to fix. If I can avoid issuing  "Sorry I'm running late, something came up at work" texts like they're stock in the Shitty Friend IPO, it'll be a good year.

Alex Taub, Biz Dev Builder at Dwolla

My New Years resolution is to be faster and better at creating relevant pop culture twitter parody accounts- a la @invisibleobama

Suri Ratnatunga, Community Lead at Sidetour

To take no cabs in 2013 unless I'm stranded/drunk in Brooklyn.

Crystal Fawn, Community Engagement at Atavist

To read all the books that Stanley Kubrick based his films on.

Taylor Lorenz, Social Media Specialist at McGarryBowen

Stop and think before including emoji in every text message.

Nitasha Tiku, Editor of Betabeat

Make friends based on charger compatibility.

(Photo: Brooke Hammerling, Instagram)

Last night, gangs of glammed-out New York techies and science enthusiasts trekked uptown to the Rose Center for Earth and Space to take in a stunningly optimistic program presented by Gizmodo and the American Museum of Natural History. The event was planned and hosted by Gawker Media founder Nick Denton (with the help of Brew PR), who appeared so eager about the "celebration of technology and discovery" that he tweeted about it numerous times prior to the event, published a grandiose blog post on Gizmodo reveling in the glorious achievements of science, and sent out an email to attendees: "This evening should be inspiring and fun," he wrote.

"I've never seen Nick so excited for a social event," one colleague remarked.

And who could begrudge Mr. Denton his excitement? The event was everything he claimed it would be--and perhaps more, depending on how many free cocktails you indulged in. Hosted by Ellen V. Futter, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and Mr. Denton himself, the gathering was as swank and inspiring as expected.

Betabeat arrived to the First Comes the Dream event around 7:30 p.m. and immediately checked in on Foursquare, as tech reporters at Foursquare-branded events are wont to do. As residents of Brooklyn, we were happy to discover we'd unlocked the Far Far Away badge--"Welcome to the world above 59th street!" it exclaimed.

In the lobby of the Rose Center, we were checked in via an iPad by a lovely woman from Brew PR, who handed us a program and directed us to the Hayden Planetarium, where the night's first event would take place. The entry hallway to the Planetarium was packed with eager attendees swigging wine and snacking on cheese and grapes. We spotted Reddit general manager Erik Martin collecting drinks for fellow attendees at the bar and stopped to say hi. He escorted us over to his group, which included Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and Gawker head of ops Scott Kidder, who had just gotten back from a trip to Budapest.

"I'm a daily Betabeat reader," admitted Mr. Kidder. "But you guys should post more." (We're working on it--promise.)

Mr. Martin and Mr. Ohanian could only stay for the first half hour of the event, as they had to get to an Internet Defense League party–complete with a stories-sized projection–downtown.

Notable names gathered at the museum included Gilt Groupe founder and CEO Kevin Ryan, NY1 newspaper addict Pat Kiernan and his colleague Jamie Shupak with New York Times media nerd Brian Stelter, and AllThingsD honcho Kara Swisher, in town from San Francisco. We also spotted NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr., father of RSS Dave Winer, Talking Points Memo deputy publisher Callie Schweitzer, and Business Insider startup reporter Alyson Shontell. A sci-fi themed string quartet scored the evening with Star Trek and Star Wars songs, while the crowd bantered and nursed their cocktails.

Soon we were ushered into the Hayden Planetarium, where we found a seat in front of Branch founder Josh Miller and his mentor, former Twitter VP of Product and current COO of the Obvious Corporation, Jason Goldman. Ms. Futter, AMNH's president, began her opening remarks as Scrollkit founder Cody Brown and New York Times media reporter David Carr snuck to their seats.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr. said a few words before deputy mayor for economic development Robert K. Steel took the podium, lamenting the fact that Ms. Futter called the astronaut "cool" but not him. Soon, the lights began to dim and the crowd was treated to a stunning walkthrough of current NASA data displayed on the Planetarium's dome by ANMH's director of astrovisualization, the lion-maned Carter Emmart.

(Photo: American Museum of Natural History, Instagram)

We craned our necks back to take in the dizzying site: Data captured just yesterday danced across the screen as Mr. Emmart zoomed in and out. He took us to the international space station, and then out further to the moon, where he focused in on some craters before taking us out further still, to Mars. Next we were viewing our entire galaxy, and then out as far as possible so that the millions of galaxies scientists have documented twinkled like pinpoints of light on the vast darkness of the unknown. There was much oohing and aahing. When Mr. Emmart remarked that his time was up, one person in the audience actually yelped: "Awww!"

The presentation was easily one of the coolest things Betabeat had ever seen. We weren't the only ones. "I don't know what to do about how much I love space," tweeted New York Times reporter Jenna Wortham.

As the lights came back on, the crowd shuffled into elevators and down to the Cullman Hall of the Universe, where drinks and hors d'oeuvres were served and the string quartet cleared from the stage to make room for i09 editor in chief Annalee Newitz and renowned physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Mr. Tyson, who skipped a pre-screening of The Dark Knight Rises to attend, was arguably the biggest attraction of the night. At the mere mention of his name by Ms. Futter earlier, the crowd burst out into spontaneous applause. The director of the Hayden Planetarium since 2000, Mr. Tyson has risen to cult status in recent years, thanks to a combination of blatant genius and a wry brand of humor that lends him a personability untouched by most physicists. To the crowd of science geeks and Redditors on the Internet, Mr. Tyson is basically a god: memes have been carved in his name for years.

The energy in the room was palpable as Mr. Tyson took the stage and the crowd erupted into wild applause. Ms. Newitz proved a deft interviewer, easily matching Mr. Tyson's impressive wit. He spoke of his dream plans for NASA ("I want aliens to be proud of what we've done"), of why we need to rekindle our space-race era love for science, and how much he loves Star Trek. At one point, while answering a question about his ideal space program, he referenced a ship that could be outfitted with various "strap-ons." The audience giggled nervously. "That's... not the right word," he admitted, chuckling, before moving on, while patches of the audience muffled their guffaws.

Soon, program wranglers were giving Ms. Newitz the cue to wrap it up, and Mr. Tyson closed the session with remarks about how to get inspired about science again. Hungry and tired, we ducked out of the event and trotted to the exit, where we were handed a First Comes the Dream-branded moleskin and wished a pleasant evening.

All of this talk about space just made us want to go up to the stars. Luckily, we ran into the one person perhaps best enabled to allow us to reach our goal: tech investor (and former journalist) Esther Dyson. Ms. Dyson is on the board of XCor, a private corporation aiming to bring sub-orbital flight to the general public, or as general a public that can afford a $95,000 per-flight ticket. Ms. Dyson told us that she was recently trying out spacesuits for the company - she's planning to be on the last flight before the company opens it up to the masses. We eagerly asked when we could join in on the zero-gravity fun. "A few years," she told us, reassuring us that, while she would be getting a preview to the experience, she would be going up after they test it thoroughly: "When they get it right."

Though we typically bleed skepticism, we found ourselves uncharacteristically moved by the event as we crossed the park to catch a cab. The air was thick with summer, the musk of trees momentarily eclipsing the normal exhaust fumes that blanket the city. We felt filled with the vastness of space the way we always do after leaving the planetarium (we are embarrassingly regular guests there), aware again of the knowledge of just how tiny our lives, our planet, even our galaxy are.

"First comes the dream," we thought.

It was probably just the wine.

But that may be changing. The rise of hacktivists from Anonymous to Aaron Swartz, the Y Combinator alum facing prison for downloading a massive data dump of academic papers from the MIT library because information wants to be free, suggests that geeks may be waking up to the impact government has on their lives.

The prime example of this is the Stop Online Piracy Act, which has workers in the internet economy worked up enough to write blog posts, hack together Chrome extensions, slap a "censored" bar across their own sites and call their Congresspeople.

David Winer over at his blog Scripting News points out that the tech blogosphere and politics blogosphere often don't read each other. But perhaps SOPA will motivate techies to pay more attention to civic issues and maybe even participate. "SOPA is great because it gets people thinking about Internet architecture," he noted today. "But it's also great because it will politically activate people who until now had largely been politically offline."

But what became of the beloved Brooklyn coworking space Mr. Langer bore, groomed and subsidized out of his own pocket? The Makery will continue as a coworking space, but is not accepting new tenants, Betabeat learned. Makery resident Bnter, headed by co-founders Lauren Leto and Patrick Moberg, has taken over the lease, Ms. Leto said. "It's Bnter offices, but everyone is still here," she told Betabeat. "As people leave, we will not replace them, because Bnter is growing weekly." The startup has four employees now and will have five as of October 17, and probably seven by the end of the year, Ms. Leto said. "So weekly isn't true," she amended. "Ha, my math is lovely."

The Makery officially closed on Sept. 1, Mr. Langer said, which coincided with the space's one-year anniversary. "I was so happy to let it go because I was just losing so much money on it," Mr. Langer said. "Like SO MUCH." (We were speaking on Gchat.) "PEACE OUT, $500 CON ED BILLS."

BLIND RAISE, BROOKLYN. A two-person, once-pivoted startup has closed a seed round for just under $250,000 from the Knight Foundation, Betabeat has learned, which will be formally announced later this month. The young team persevered despite a failure to gain traction on the first iteration and has now produced a tool with a different name and which bears little resemblance to version 1.0. The entrepreneurs are still hammering out the bugs, but they (and Knight) hope media companies will find it useful.

OCCUPY SILICON ALLEY. Meetup's socially-conscious co-founder Scott Heiferman and New York tech staple Dave Winer have both come out in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. "Let's stop turning our brightest students over to the VCs to become mini-Zucks," Mr. Winer wrote. "Most of them will fail. It's a bad deal for the kids, and it's mortgaging the future of academia, the same way the bankers are mortgaging everything else."

But the tech scene at large seemed to be largely turning up its nose. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was tweeting and Instagramming about his lovely walk down Wall Street on Wednesday, which caused a few sympathetic local techies to pause: "It would be so cool if @Jack were heading to Occupy Wall Street!" but nay, Mr. Dorsey was headed to the New York Stock Exchange for the elbow-rubbing, Guest of a Guest-snapping SAI 100 party.

Steve Jobs was a hippie-lefty-radical (sorta) leaning mind; Google's co-founders go to Burning Man every year. Tech innovators have historically been in line with the creative underclasses, one entrepreneur told Betabeat, so why is it that the well-scrubbed necks at General Assembly are going around saying people at Occupy Wall Street just need to get a job (or learn how to code)? "While the aimless and outraged struggled to get pics and videos of police abuse downtown and telling tails of the horrors of pepper spray, some people actually attempting to *create* change were busy hacking together funding projects for UNICEF at the NYC Famine Hackathon," Charlie O'Donnell wrote in his This Week In Innovation newsletter on Monday. "While protesters demand undefined 'change' by stripping down to their underwear, the team at Banksimple works hard at ending the tyrrany of bank fees and customer abuse by actually building a new kind of bank from the ground up—one with the consumer at the center."

The tide of tech sympathy, however, may be turning. Even Bryce Roberts got on board, putting it into techspeak: "#occupywallst proving to be a classic disruptor. dismissed as whiny hippies a few weeks ago now doubling every 3 days," he wrote on Twttr, and said he plans to visit the protest and at least see for himself.

THE NEW NORMAL. Apparently the mourning period on the internet is 48 hours, as Betabeat's Ben Popper noticed with amusement, because the day after the glowing stories about Steve Jobs was followed by a day of negative ones. "The Other Steve Jobs: Censorship, Control and Labor Rights," writes ReadWriteWeb's newest hire, Alicia Eler. In the comments, to pacify angry Jobsians, editor/publisher Richard MacManus weighed in: "While we adored Jobs, we wanted to share the other side too in order to give a fuller picture. I would recommend however also reading my article linked to above, for a more balanced profile of Steve Jobs' immense achievements." Under the bus with you!

Is looking at this making you angry? You aren't alone.

OnSwipe, the breakout start-up from TechStarsNY that converts websites into iPad-ready HTML5, launched to much fanfare last week.  But now that people have had some time to play around with it, not everyone likes what they see.

Entrepreneur/NYU j-school scholar Dave Winer began a post last night on ScriptingNews with, "I'm really getting annoyed with OnSwipe." This morning, Mr. Winer tweeted a link to a thread on Hacker News with Bay Area coder Danilo Campos declaring, front-and-center, "Fucking crimony do I hate OnSwipe."

Why all the haterade? One would think that if anyone was anti-Onswipe, it would be Apple.
After all, using just a line of  Javascript, publishing partners like Hearst, Slate, and Reuters get a slick, touch-enabled sites that let them dodge Apple's 30% on in-app purchases. Plus these publishers can now sell ads at app prices instead of web prices;  OnSwipe gets a cut of those ads.  But the acrimony is coming from end-users, not Apple.

Mr. Winer's objections seem to center around what happens to an OnSwipe-enabled Wordpress blogs (Automattic is another OnSwipe partner) when you try to view a link on a non-tablet device. Namely the fact that all the content disappears.

"I was looking at Brad Feld's blog on my iPad, and thought, man that looks nice, I want to show everyone. But when I tried to look at the link on my Mac, all I saw was a tab in the upper-left corner that said "Cover" with an arrow. On my iPad it would take you to a page with an array of Brad's stories. On my Mac it does nothing."

Here's what it looks like on a tablet:

Mr. Winer also objected, rather snarkily, to Automattic founder Matt Mullenwegg's response to his frustration. Mr. Mullenweg tweeted at Mr. Winer, "We change the code on WP.com over 35 times a day, it evolves rapidly - not everyone likes it but hopefully we can find a balance." Mr. Winer blogged that it reminded him of the Abe Lincoln quote, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

On HackerNews,  a community it should be noted, prone to seeing the worst in things on occasion, the frustration also seemed to be around the WordPress implementation.

Fucking crimony do I hate OnSwipe. Loathe it. It's just such a waste. It looks stupid, its scrolling feels wrong and it presents everyone's content identically. It solves absolutely zero problems, creates new ones and is impossible to escape. (I have fantasized about creating a proxy at home to strip out its bullshit.) The irony here being that the iPad is perfect for displaying very nearly everything on the web just as it already is. WordPress blogs look excellent on the iPad without any of this nonsense. OnSwipe has become a perfect tool for preventing me from viewing content I'd otherwise happily read.

Here's the thing: As a start-up suddenly supporting Wordpress' 18 million odd blogs, bugs and complaints are inevitable. For OnSwipe to succeed, their level of customer support will be key. But providing the kind of feedback they were doling out back in March might not be possible to maintain:

Based on founder Jason Baptiste's comments on the Hacker News thread, he's not afraid to dive into the mud-slinging.