With the upcoming release of Windows 8 and Office 2013, and this week’s announcement of the (seemingly) drool-worthy Surface tablets, the last few months of 2012 were already shaping up to be a busy time for Microsoft. But today the company took the wraps off yet another 2012 addition to its release lineup: Windows Phone 8. And, surprisingly, all of these products seem to have a coherent theme; for the first time I can remember Microsoft appears to be getting its act together, leveraging “Windows” and everything that entails to push other products that extend a user experience that hundreds of millions of people know and use.

Windows Phone 8, which is really version 2.0 of the Windows Phone OS, builds on WP7 and catches up, in many respects, to iOS and Android with new hardware support, new software, lots of new features, and an expanded ecosystem.

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It’s a day worth nothing in your journal when Microsoft surprises us with a new, innovative product, so grab a pen and get comfortable.  The company behind Windows, Office, XBox and Windows Phone unveiled a product that some had speculated about, but none had come close to nailing down: new Surface tablet.

And they even managed to pull it off with a bit of punk, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo cool.

While there’s a lot going on here, and surely much more to come over the next few months, here’s what you need to know about Microsoft’s upcoming Surface tablets:

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Getting free Dropbox storage is always nice, and the company just keeps adding new and interesting ways of racking up extra MBs.  The latest, Camera Upload, is a new feature that allows compatible Android and iPhone smartphones running the latest version of the Dropbox app to automatically upload new photos and video to the service as you shoot them.  And for every 500MB of photos/video you upload, you’ll get 500MB of free storage – up to 3GB.

Of course, once you’ve earned that free space, you can always delete the photos or video files to keep your Cloud drive from becoming cluttered, but since the free space grows as you upload new content, you don’t have to worry much about it.

Extra free space can also be earned by uploading media when connected to your computer as long as you have the latest version of Dropbox running on your PC or Mac.

Dropbox for iPhone / iPad

Dropbox for Android

After weeks of delays stemming from Apple’s patent litigation, the HTC One X has finally made its way back to AT&T and other third-party retailers in the U.S.

AT&T now has both the gray and white One X’s in stock at $199 with a two-year contract.  Amazon Wireless has the gray One X in stock for shipping today for $179 with contract; the white model is not yet in stock at Amazon.

Hopefully, all of the U.S. Customs foolishness with HTC Android handsets is over, but this may be just a temporary break in the patent wars. 

Stay tuned.

The Android Samsung Galaxy S III superphone was by no means a secret before today, but this is the day we got official details for three of the four major U.S. wireless carriers’ plans for the handset.

Sprint and T-Mobile announced this morning that their own versions of the Galaxy S III will ship on June 21 – just a few weeks from now.  Each carrier will offer both 16GB and 32GB versions of the S III, and each will have a dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM.  The price will be $199 and $249 respectively, and the phone will be available in either blue or white.  Pre-orders begin soon. 

Verizon will also begin selling the Samsung S III “in the coming weeks”  with 2GB of RAM and a dual-core 1.5GHz processor onboard.  Pre-orders begin June 6th. While the press release didn’t give an exact date, chances are the LTE Verizon version will be available for sale around June 21. Same price tiers, $199 for 16GB and $249 for 32GB.

Other features of the Samsung S III include Android 4.0, a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display, an 8MP primary camera, and a 2MP front-facing camera. 

Learn more about the Samsung Galaxy S III Android 4.0 Smartphone…

UPDATE – AT&T has joined in, too.  The Galaxy S III is taking over!