The AT&T blog has been buzzing over the past several days with notes of expanded and new LTE-enabled markets. The carrier is making haste in its efforts to shrink Verizon's significant lead in LTE service in the United States. Wednesday brought news of six new markets and details on one expanded market.

Google Drive got a major overhaul on Wednesday, adding some features borrowed from Google+ as well as the ability to scan documents as PDF files and download copies of your files onto your device. I kicked the tires on the updated app on the Droid DNA, the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus 7, and I'm only too happy to share the results (and accompanying screenshots) with you.

Google has really stacked the deck with its app updates in the past week or so with the card interface paradigm, and Google Drive became the latest to show its new hand today. Other highlights of the update include the ability to download copies of your files onto your device, photo search that can find words within photos and the ability to scan and save your documents.

The Amazon App Store hit a major milestone Wednesday, updating to version 5.0. With the update comes wider support for international users as well as some bug fixes. But is this still a clunky, slow application that puts a strain on the battery? Will that matter now that there is support for 200 countries?

Thor, he of the witty one-liners, the wielder of Mjolnir, the bane of Ragnarok, is subject of today’s not quite tower defense but heavily action-oriented game Thor: Lord Of Storms. The developers over at Animoca have recently added the Norse-themed action game to its stable of heavily, decidedly less manly, games such as “Star Girl” and series of “Pretty Pet” games. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather be playing a kick-butt Thor game as opposed to, say, Pretty Pet Salon. But that’s just me.

Last year, T-Mobile threw down the gauntlet and announced it would no longer subsidize smartphones and went to a pay-as-you-go format. Since the beginning of the year, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon Wireless have also announced changes to their pay-as-you-go strategies. While the Big Two (AT&T and Verizon Wireless) took baby steps towards making pay-as-you-go a viable alternative for their contract customers, this is still a positive development in my opinion. More choices in the no-contract space are a small but important win for consumers and will hopefully lead to more options for customers of all four of the major U.S. carriers.

You may have heard of app developer OneLouder and may be familiar with some of the popular apps it has released, including Tweetcaster, Friendcaster, 1Weather, and Reddit client Baconreader. You might find it troubling, though, that on Monday Sprint announced its buyout of OneLouder's parent company Handmark. If you are indeed concerned about what this means for the future of your favorite apps, Sprint attempted to calm your fears by promising not to discontinue them.