The Crunchies Awards are always a year-end highlight. They highlight the very best in technology innovation each year, and tonight we had the pleasure of bestowing that weird little money trophy out to your tech favorites.

We also got to watch John Oliver of The Daily Show fame make fun of Silicon Valley.

He started out giving the presenters advice on how to best deliver an acceptance speech: “Say thank you and leave.” He proceeded to tell us that his favorite technology innovation is the t-shirt cannon. Unfotunately, however, we had no t-shirt cannon representation at this year’s Crunchies, but we did have some fabulous companies. So, on to the winners!

Best Technology Achievement: Mars Curiosity

The little rover that could made it to Mars and captured our hearts on Twitter. We were honored to host Bobak Ferdowsi, otherwise known as NASA’s mohawk man who informed us that Curiosity is actually a lady! JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA refers to all of its rovers as girls. Work that Crunchie Award, space-dust-collecting-girlfriend!

Best Collaborative Consumption: Airbnb

Airbnb is the Airbnb for, well, itself. The company that connects people with houses to people who who want to skip the hotel experience has grown into a force in the collaborative consumption industry. When it comes to letting people use their own crap to make money, they’re tops.

Best E-commerce Application: Fab

Fab really is just that. The company is aiming to make people flock to its inventory in the same way they flock to a magazine. And it seems to be working. Keep showing us how awesome our lives could be, Fab, we’re that close to buying a faux bear-skin rug from you.

Best Mobile Application: Google Maps

Thank you, Google Maps. You’ve helped us find our hotels on vacations, coffee shops on first dates, and even helped us get to the nearest bus station when either of those went horribly wrong.

Fastest Rising Startup: SnapChat

Whoops, did you see that hilarious congratulations picture of me shotgunning a beer while flipping the bird? Not anymore! Snapchat lets us send self-destructing photo and video messages for those all those times we just can’t help but embarrass ourselves.

Best Content Discovery Application: Pinterest

Pinterest could have just as easily won the biggest time suck award. People spend hours on end looking at wedding paraphernalia, recipes, or fashion, but those little rectangular pins really do help us find beautiful things in the vast, vast Internet.

Best Design: Paper by 53

53′s app Paper gives the digital back that wonderful paper feel. But while their gorgeous design brings out the artist in all of us, they haven’t been able to capture that great paper smell. Maybe they can start sending out paper-scent air fresheners with each app download in 2013.

Best Bootstrapped Startup: Techmeme

If you read this site, you probably know Techmeme. It’s the website we all flock to for our daily dose of what’s popping on the tech leaderboards. But though its webpages are filled with news about investors every day, the company remains self-funded. Well done, guys.

Sexiest Enterprise Startup: Box

“This is an amazing honor, I feel like Snapchat right now,” said Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, perfectly summarizing his company’s competitive advantage: a witty co-founder with a Twitter account. Of course, we kid. Box is much more than that. It competes directly with big cloud storage names like Dropbox and Google Drive, but maintains its scrappy integrity and, as you can see, sense of humor.

Best International Startup: Soundcloud

You want to share some music with your buddies, Soundcloud gives you a legit way to go about. It’s like a YouTube for sound and while it may be great for sending awesome music out into the world, you might want to check out John Oliver’s weekly The Bugle. We’ll let you discover that for yourself.

Best Education Startup: Codecademy

Codecademy wants to bring the sometimes elusive world of coding to everyone. Like any language, code is difficult to learn, but the company walks you through the process with the hopes that anyone can learn in their spare time. To drive this point home, Codecademy sent up a customer to accept the award. She announced that she’d quit her job after starting Codecademy classes in 2011 and was looking for a new one being, guess what? A programmer. Congrats on your success, Codecademy!

Best Hardware Startup – Makerbot

Next year we’re just going to print out awards for everyone. Why? Because 3-D printing makes it possible! It’s an awesome world when you can just press File-Print on a dishwasher repair piece or a missing chess piece and suddenly have it in your hands. Makerbot is bringing manufacturing home in this way, and we are glad to watch the printing revolution happen before our eyes!

Best Time Sink: Buzzfeed

Cats, cats, cats, dogs, 15 Best Ways to Clean Your Toilet Without Having to Clean Your Toilet, babies, cats, congrats.

Biggest Social Impact: Reddit

Believe it or not, Reddit is filled with more than just weird fan fiction, Imgur links, and great communities — it’s also filled with incredibly generous folks who are willing to gather together to give for a cause.

And Reddit says it has only two people to thank: the users and President Obama for coming to the site.

Best Angel Investor: Chris Dixon

Chris Dixon is an investor with Andreessen-Horowitz who invests in some awesome early-stage startups. He’s passed checks along to Skupe, Hipmunk, Kickstarter, and a number of other successful startups. Keep pointing us in the right direction, Chris, we like what you’re doing!

VC of the Year: Peter Thiel

Founder’s Fund managing director Peter Thiel has helped spawn a generation of entrepreneurs, and he continues to shape Silicon Valley’s future with smart, analytical investments that prove his ability time and again. He was an early investor in Facebook, and this year he helped grow Palantir into billion dollar data analysis giant.

Founder of the Year: Kevin Systrom

The surprise deal of the year was Facebook’s nearly billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram (subsequently revised to about $700 billion, given changes in Facebook’s valuation). That undoubtedly made Systrom one of the happiest founders. He’s also one of the cleverest, building Instagram from a simple photo-sharing app into one of the hottest new social networks.

CEO of the Year: Mark Zuckerberg

There really wasn’t any serious competition: With a successful (if controversial) IPO and a billion active users, Facebook owned 2012. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has shown a rare ability to transition from entrepreneurial founder to the leader of a large public company, translation vision into action and creating a uniquely developer-centric culture that has taken Facebook to the heights of social networking. Just 28 years old, Zuckerberg has already shown leadership far beyond his age. Just imagine what he’ll do with the next 10 years.

Best new startup of 2012: Coursera

More than 2.5 million people have taken university courses — from some of the world’s top educational institutions — through Coursera’s online education platform. That’s pretty impressive for a company that has been around less than a year.

Best overall startup: Github

A massive code repository and tool for helping coders share their work and collaborate on projects, Github has grown to become an indispensable part of the tech ecosystem. Its Crunchie reflects just how much of a difference it has made, from open-source projects to enterprise development and beyond.

And the nominees were…

Who were the winners above going up against? Here are the nominees in each category.

Best Technology Achievement

Felix Baumgartner’s Jump
Google Glass
Mars Curiosity
SpaceX docks with International Space Station
Tesla Supercharger Network

Best Collaborative Consumption Service

Airbnb
Get It Now/Postmates
Lyft
TaskRabbit
Uber

Best E-Commerce Application

Fab
Hotel Tonight
Karma/Facebook Gifts
Warby Parker
Zulily

Best Mobile Application

Evernote
Google Maps
Grindr
Instagram
Square

Fastest Rising Startup

Exec
Lyft
Pinterest
Snapchat
Stripe

Best Content Discovery Application

Flipboard
Instapaper
Pinterest
Prismatic
Tumblr

Best Design

Facebook Timeline
Medium
Paper by FiftyThree
Square
Svbtle

Best Bootstrapped Startup

FreshBooks
Instapaper
Nimbus
Techmeme
Upverter

Sexiest Enterprise Startup

Asana
Box
Cloudera
Plexxi
Zendesk

Best International Startup

Hailo
Rovio
Soundcloud
Spotify
Xiaomi

Best Education Startup

Codecademy
Coursera
Edmodo
Khan Academy
Udacity

Best Hardware Startup

Lit Motors
Lockitron
Makerbot
Nest
Raspberry Pi

Best Time Sink

Angry Birds Star Wars
Buzzfeed
Letterpress
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Biggest Social Impact

Donors Choose
Indiegogo
Kickstarter
Kiva
Reddit

Angel of the Year

Michael Arrington
Chris Dixon
Paul Graham
David Lee
Chris Sacca

VC of the Year

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Jim Goetz
Michael Moritz
Peter Thiel

Founder of the Year

Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia (Airbnb)
Kevin and Julia Hartz (Eventbrite)
Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla)
Kevin Systrom (Instagram)
Nir Zuk (Palo Alto Networks)

CEO of the Year

Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Marissa Mayer (Yahoo!)
Larry Page (Google)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Best New Startup of 2012

Coursera
Crowdtilt
Lyft
Snapchat
Waze

Best Overall Startup of 2012

Fab
Github
Instagram
Palantir
Square

Crunchies image via TechCrunch/Flickr

Daily Show correspondent John Oliver will host the Crunchies this year, bringing his strain of silliness and satiric wit to the awards ceremony that honors achievements in the technology community. Oliver is known for his exaggerated Britishness as well as his deadpan delivery that makes people feel uncomfortable and laugh at the same time. He won two Emmy awards for comedy writing, and his own Comedy Central series, John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show, just aired its third season.

Oliver has a knack for finding hilarity in unlikely places. Let’s see how he does with collaborative consumption services, angel investors, and the enterprise. You can find this year’s finalists here. To vote, head over to the 2012 Crunchies voting page and tell us which is your favorite in each category.

The Crunchies, a joint production with our friends at TechCrunch and GigaOm, take place on Thursday, Jan. 31, from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco. You can purchase tickets here.

And now, the moment you all have been waiting for: VentureBeat, GigaOm, and TechCrunch are pleased to announce the finalists for the 2012 Crunchies awards.

We combed through thousands of your submissions, considered your votes, and put them together with our editors’ expertise to come up with this list. The companies, technologies, and achievements on this list are the cream of the crop — the most innovative, impactful, and world-beating ideas to come out of the tech world.

Check out our finalists in all 20 categories below. And congratulations to every one of them for making it to this exclusive list.

Now we need you to vote on the finalists! Head over to the 2012 Crunchies voting page and tell us which is your favorite in each category.

The Crunchies, a joint production with our friends at TechCrunch and GigaOm, take place on Thursday, Jan. 31, from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco. You can purchase tickets here.

Best Technology Achievement

Felix Baumgartner’s Jump
Google Glass
Mars Curiosity
SpaceX docks with International Space Station
Tesla Supercharger Network

Best Collaborative Consumption Service

Airbnb
Get It Now/Postmates
Lyft
TaskRabbit
Uber

Best E-Commerce Application

Fab
Hotel Tonight
Karma/Facebook Gifts
Warby Parker
Zulily

Best Mobile Application

Evernote
Google Maps
Grindr
Instagram
Square

Fastest Rising Startup

Exec
Lyft
Pinterest
Snapchat
Stripe

Best Content Discovery Application

Flipboard
Instapaper
Pinterest
Prismatic
Tumblr

Best Design

Facebook Timeline
Medium
Paper by FiftyThree
Square
Svbtle

Best Bootstrapped Startup

FreshBooks
Instapaper
Nimbus
Techmeme
Upverter

Sexiest Enterprise Startup

Asana
Box
Cloudera
Plexxi
Zendesk

Best International Startup

Hailo
Rovio
Soundcloud
Spotify
Xiaomi

Best Education Startup

Codecademy
Coursera
Edmodo
Khan Academy
Udacity

Best Hardware Startup

Lit Motors
Lockitron
Makerbot
Nest
Raspberry Pi

Best Time Sink

Angry Birds Star Wars
Buzzfeed
Letterpress
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Biggest Social Impact

Donors Choose
Indiegogo
Kickstarter
Kiva
Reddit

Angel of the Year

Michael Arrington
Chris Dixon
Paul Graham
David Lee
Chris Sacca

VC of the Year

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Jim Goetz
Michael Moritz
Peter Thiel

Founder of the Year

Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia (Airbnb)
Kevin and Julia Hartz (Eventbrite)
Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla)
Kevin Systrom (Instagram)
Nir Zuk (Palo Alto Networks)

CEO of the Year

Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Marissa Mayer (Yahoo!)
Larry Page (Google)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Best New Startup of 2012

Coursera
Crowdtilt
Lyft
Snapchat
Waze

Best Overall Startup of 2012

Fab
Github
Instagram
Palantir
Square

Your Favorites

Which ones deserve to win? Go to the 2012 Crunchies voting page and tell us which is your favorite in each category. Do it now!

Buy your Crunchies tickets through Eventbrite and get ready for a star-studded, glamorous evening in San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, January 31, 2013.

This is the 6th year that VentureBeat has co-hosted these awards, along with GigaOm and TechCrunch. Over the years, the awards have grown to attract thousands of nominations and hundreds of attendees each year. It’s a chance for us to celebrate and honor the best the tech industry has to offer.

It’s not too late to nominate your favorite startup for the awards. Nominations close on December 6, 2012, so get your entries in before then!

Once all the nominations are in, judges from the three hosting publications will narrow the entrants down to five finalists in each of 20 different categories. We’ll post the finalists, and you’ll have a chance to vote on your favorites throughout January.

We’ll unveil the winners on January 31, 2013, at the awards ceremony.

So get your Crunchies nominations in now. Want to know more? Check the official Crunchies rules.

And we hope to see you in San Francisco!

More info:

The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Tickets are on sale here. Be sure to act fast!

Nominations are open now.
Nominations close: Thursday, December 6th at 11:59pm PST
Finalists announced: early January

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact sponsors@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

List of Categories:

Best Technology Achievement (2011: Siri)
Best Collaborative Consumption Service (New for 2012)
Best E-Commerce Application (New for 2012)
Best Mobile Application (2011: Evernote)
Fastest Rising Startup (New for 2012)
Best Content Discovery Application (New for 2012)
Best Design (2011: Path 2.0)
Best Bootstrapped Startup (2011: Imgur)
Sexiest Enterprise Startup (New for 2012)
Best International Startup (2011: Peixe Urbano)
Best Education Startup (New for 2012)
Best Hardware Startup (New for 2012)
Best Time Sink (2011: Words With Friends)
Biggest Social Impact (2011: Twitter)
Angel of the Year (2011: Reid Hoffman)
VC of the Year (2011: Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz)
Founder of the Year (2011: Jack Dorsey)
CEO of the Year (2011: Jeff Weiner)
Best New Startup of 2012 (2011: Pinterest)
Best Overall Startup of 2012 (2011: Dropbox)

Tickets go on sale today for the 6th Annual Crunchies Awards, which celebrate innovation, entrepreneurship, and the most promising tech startups.

Buy your Crunchies tickets through Eventbrite and get ready for a star-studded, glamorous evening in San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, January 31, 2013.

This is the 6th year that VentureBeat has co-hosted these awards, along with GigaOm and TechCrunch. Over the years, the awards have grown to attract thousands of nominations and hundreds of attendees each year. It’s a chance for us to celebrate and honor the best the tech industry has to offer.

It’s not too late to nominate your favorite startup for the awards. Nominations close on December 6, 2012, so get your entries in before then!

Once all the nominations are in, judges from the three hosting publications will narrow the entrants down to five finalists in each of 20 different categories. We’ll post the finalists, and you’ll have a chance to vote on your favorites throughout January.

We’ll unveil the winners on January 31, 2013, at the awards ceremony.

So get your Crunchies nominations in now. Want to know more? Check the official Crunchies rules.

And we hope to see you in San Francisco!

More info:

The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Tickets are on sale here. Be sure to act fast!

Nominations are open now.
Nominations close: Thursday, December 6th at 11:59pm PST
Finalists announced: early January

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contactsponsors@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

List of Categories:

Best Technology Achievement (2011: Siri)
Best Collaborative Consumption Service (New for 2012)
Best E-Commerce Application (New for 2012)
Best Mobile Application (2011: Evernote)
Fastest Rising Startup (New for 2012)
Best Content Discovery Application (New for 2012)
Best Design (2011: Path 2.0)
Best Bootstrapped Startup (2011: Imgur)
Sexiest Enterprise Startup (New for 2012)
Best International Startup (2011: Peixe Urbano)
Best Education Startup (New for 2012)
Best Hardware Startup (New for 2012)
Best Time Sink (2011: Words With Friends)
Biggest Social Impact (2011: Twitter)
Angel of the Year (2011: Reid Hoffman)
VC of the Year (2011: Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz)
Founder of the Year (2011: Jack Dorsey)
CEO of the Year (2011: Jeff Weiner)
Best New Startup of 2012 (2011: Pinterest)
Best Overall Startup of 2012 (2011: Dropbox)

Startups, start your engines! We are now accepting nominations for the 6th Annual Crunchies Awards, which celebrate technology innovation, entrepreneurship, and startups.

This is the 6th year that VentureBeat has co-hosted these awards, along with GigaOm and TechCrunch. Over the years, they’ve become quite a big deal, attracting thousands of nominations and hundreds of attendees at the actual event.

Like last year, this year’s awards ceremony and party will be held in Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. It happens on Thursday, January 31, 2013. It’s a gala occasion that celebrates the best that the startup world has to offer.

Between now and then, the awards will go through several stages.

Nominations open: November 1, 2012
Nominations close: December 6, 2012

Once all the nominations are in, judges from the three hosting publications will narrow the entrants down to five finalists in each categories. We’ll post the finalists, and you’ll have a chance to vote on your favorites.

Finalists posted, voting begins: January 3, 2013
Voting closes: January 24, 2013

We’ll announce the winners on January 31, 2013, at the awards ceremony.

So get your Crunchies nominations in now. Want to know more? Check the official Crunchies rules.

The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards are co-hosted by GigaOm, TechCrunch and VentureBeat. Check out TechCrunch’s post about the nominations, and read GigaOm’s nominations post too.

Here are this year’s award categories, along with the names of last year’s winners:

1. Best Technology Achievement (2011: Siri)
2. Best Collaborative Consumption Service (New for 2012)
3. Best E-Commerce Application (New for 2012)
4. Best Mobile Application (2011: Evernote)
5. Fastest Rising Startup (New for 2012)
6. Best Content Discovery Application (New for 2012)
7. Best Design (2011: Path 2.0)
8. Best Bootstrapped Startup (2011: Imgur)
9. Sexiest Enterprise Startup (New for 2012)
10. Best International Startup (2011: Peixe Urbano)
11. Best Education Startup (New for 2012)
12. Best Hardware Startup (New for 2012)
13. Best Time Sink (2011: Words With Friends)
14. Biggest Social Impact (2011: Twitter)
15. Angel of the Year (2011: Reid Hoffman)
16. VC of the Year (2011: Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz)
17. Founder of the Year (2011: Jack Dorsey)
18. CEO of the Year (2011: Jeff Weiner)
19. Best New Startup of 2012 (2011: Pinterest)
20. Best Overall Startup of 2012 (2011: Dropbox)

Good luck, and may the best startups win!

Top photo: Co-hosts of the 5th annual Crunchies Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch), Om Malik (GigaOm), and Matt Marshall (VentureBeat). Photo credit: TechCrunch